


A Bad Influence

by lady_eva



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Use, Explicit Language, M/M, Oral Sex, Smut, repressed homosexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:38:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1990044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_eva/pseuds/lady_eva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.  Michael did not get involved in a life of crime and he never met Trevor.  Now middle-aged and unhappily retired from a successful career in the NFL, Michael meets Trevor for the first time in AA and is slowly introduced to all of the things that he never realised he wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unusual Introduction

The sound of two brisk claps echoed throughout the room.

“If you’d all like to take a seat, we can get started.”

The people in the room glanced in the direction of the man who had spoken and the soft murmur of conversation began to quieten.  With an air of reluctance they began to make their way towards the wide circle of chairs in the centre of the room, a few people clutching plastic cups of coffee or small cakes, and the room was soon filled with the sound of chairs scraping against the wooden floor.  The man who had spoken gazed at the people milling around him with a soft – and slightly smug – smile on his lips.  Here and there in the circle someone would smile back at him or nod gently, but the majority of the group looked utterly disinterested.  One woman didn’t take her eyes off her phone as she sat down, and another man appeared to be fascinated by his own fingernails.  More than a few people were scowling at the smug man and didn’t attempt to hide their looks of contempt or even outright hostility.  Appearing not to notice the looks he was getting, the man cleared his throat with an audible ‘ahem’ and grandly swept a hand towards two of the men in the circle.

“I see we have some new members this week!  Welcome, welcome!  It’s always an exciting prospect seeing new faces!”  He firmly clasped his hands together and beamed in a nauseating manner, but despite his words his enthusiasm did not quite reach his eyes.  The attention of the group turned to focus on the newcomers, causing one of the men to avert his eyes and slump even lower in his chair.  He slowly rubbed the back of his neck as if he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands.  The other newcomer sat with his arms folded and knees wide apart, and answered the greeting with a cool and level stare that was almost predatory in its intensity.

“Now come on, don’t be shy, we all have to start somewhere!  How about I introduce myself first, hmm?  My name is Dr Isiah Friedlander,” he said gently, “I am a psychiatrist by training and I’ve been managing this little group for almost a year now.  Before that, I actually had my own psychiatry practice.”  He smiled softly and sighed, his gaze trailing off into the middle distance.  “Back then my books were filled with the names of Los Santos’s rich and famous – ooh, some of their issues and insecurities you would not believe!”

He gave a short laugh which trailed off into a wistful smile.  As the pause grew longer and longer his audience began to glance at each other uncomfortably.  Dr Friedlander then let out a dramatic sigh.

“You don’t need to worry about any of that, that’s all ancient history now.  Due a number of unfortunate circumstances – none of which that were my fault in any way – I had to give up my practice, and these days I’m employed by the state to help you all on your journey out of addiction and into sobriety, completely free of charge.  I’m here to be your friend, not to psychoanalyse you, so feel free to drop the “doctor” title and just call me Isiah!”  He chuckled again to himself.  “So then, now that you’ve heard all about me why don’t you each introduce yourselves to the group and tell us a little about you?”

He beckoned towards one of the newcomers, the one who looked like he was trying to melt into his plastic chair.

“How about you start us off, hmm?”

The newcomer cast his eyes to the ground, then gripped the plastic seat under him with both hands and slowly pushed himself up into a normal sitting position.  He gave a quick glance around the circle and cleared his throat.

“Yeah, uh, I’m Michael-”

“Stand up, stand up!” interrupted Dr Friedlander, gesturing frantically in an upward motion.

Michael gave a small, inaudible sigh and stood up, scraping back his chair against the wooden floor.  He ran one hand through his bristly dark hair.

“I’m Michael.”

Dr Friedlander gave him a wide-eyed expectant look.

“And I’m…?” he suggested.

Michael scratched absentmindedly at his stubble, his eyes blank with confusion.  He then gave a small “oh” and nodded in comprehension.

“My name’s Michael and I’m an… I’m an alcoholic.”  His gaze returned to the floor.

“Hi Michael,” droned the rest of the group.

As Michael stood and tried to organise his thoughts into an appropriate introduction – what the hell were you supposed to say at these things anyway – he overheard a muttered conversation from the other side of the circle.

“Hey, I am nuts or is that Michael Townley?”

Cold dread settled in Michael’s stomach and scattered all the thoughts in his head.  He clenched his fists.  Dammit, he _knew_ this was going to happen. 

“Who?  Oh, the old quarterback for the Magnetics?  Hmm, yeah… yeah I think it is.  Shit, that’s Michael Townley!”

Michael tried to act as if he hadn’t heard them and stammered on with his introduction.

“So yeah, I’m an alcoholic and uh… I said something I shouldn’t have to a cop and…”

“Michael Townley’s in AA!  Damn, retirement must’ve hit him hard!”

The coldness in Michael’s gut boiled into a mix of rage and humiliation.  If _he_ could hear what these guys were saying then surely everyone else in the room could too.

“Oh man, the guys are gonna freak when I tell them…”

“ALRIGHT!” Michael yelled at the two guys.  His face was crimson.  “That’s enough!”

He took a step towards them.

“Yes, I’m that Michael Townley!”

He took another step forward.

“Yes, I’m that quarterback from the Magnetics!”

With another step he was standing in the centre of the circle. 

“And yeah, I am in AA and I’m an alcoholic and it’s absolutely fucking hilarious!  Is there anything else you’d like to point out about me?  Huh!?  While I’m – I’m standing up here like an idiot and a loser at the centre of everyone’s attention?  _Are you!?_   Or are you gonna shut up and let me speak?”

Michael’s blood was pounding in his ears and every muscle felt alive - buzzing and electric and just begging to hit something.  He towered over the guys sitting in their chairs in front of him and glared down at their stupid gawping faces with hot breath snorting from his nose.  At least they had the decency to look ashamed, and maybe a little terrified.

“I-I, we… we’re sorry, we didn’t mean anything by it, bro, it’s just… I dunno…”

His friend chimed in.

“D-Didn’t expect to see anyone famous here.  I figured you’d all go to those fancy rehab places in Rockford Hills, you know, like the ones you see on TV!  Not some church hall 12-step program in Strawberry with the rest of us.”

The corner of Michael’s mouth turned up and he let out a small, weary laugh.   He felt his anger start to fade.

“Yeah, well, here I am.  It’s not like I had much of a choice in the matter.”  A small smile broke out across his face that didn’t quite reach his eyes.  “I don’t recommend pissing off the cop who pulled you over for a DUI by repeatedly screaming _‘don’t you know who I am!?’_ in his face.  Even if you manage to narrowly avoid jail time they’ll find other ways to get revenge on you.  Turns out that particular cop is good friends with a judge, and that judge decided that attending a church hall 12-step program in Strawberry would be ‘good for my ego’.”  He shrugged.  “I guess it beats prison.  So yeah…”

He spread out his arms.

“Here I am”

He held the gaze of the two guys for a moment, enjoying their wide-eyed looks of terror, then spat out a sigh of disgust and wandered back to his seat with a smirk on his lips.  The other newcomer caught his eye with a nod and grinned broadly in amusement.

Dr Friedlander cleared his throat and stood up from his chair.

“Thank you for that… interesting… introduction Michael.”  He smiled weakly and cleared his throat again unnecessarily.  “Now that everyone’s cooled off a bit I think that this would be a good time to say again what I say every week.  All the regulars will know this by now: everybody sitting in this room is in the same boat – regardless of where we’ve come from.”  He cast a prolonged glance at Michael.  “Everyone is an addict and - believe me - we are _all_ at rock bottom here.  However, we are all able to take back control of our lives, and the crucial first step in doing that is to take responsibility for the things we have done wrong while under the influence of alcohol – so thank you for that honest introduction Michael.  Over the coming sessions we will help you to get you back your self-control… and perhaps get that, hmm, _temper_ under control as well.”

Turning from Michael, Dr Friedlander then gestured towards the other newcomer.

“Would you like to introduce yourself to the group?”

Michael glanced at the other newcomer sitting to his right – and jumped when he saw the man was staring at him.  Their eyes locked for what seemed like an uncomfortably long length of time - which in reality was probably only a second or two – before the man turned to Dr Friedlander and slowly got to his feet.  As he moved Michael’s nose was assaulted with a waft of the stench he’d been carefully trying not to breathe in since the moment he’d first sat down.  It was a horrendous smell, the kind that stuck to the inside of your nostrils: filthy and sickening and clearly emanating from the layers of grime living on the man’s clothes and skin.  Didn’t the guy ever take a shower?  With a grimace Michael leaned forward and balanced an elbow on each knee, and then rested his head against his clasped hands in an attempt subtly block the smell with his fingers.

“Why yes, Isiah, I would like to introduce myself to the group.”  The man’s voice was gravelly and his tone patronising.  “Hi everybody, my name is Trevor and I am a…”

He paused and absentmindedly scratched at his thinning hair.

“Ok, I have a question for the good doctor.  Does the A in AA stand for ‘alcoholics’ or for ‘addicts’?”

The doctor’s brow furrowed.

“Umm… Trevor, I should make it clear that this isn’t an AA meeting.  We’re sometimes mistakenly referred to as AA, but this is a state-sponsored sobriety group.”  He spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable clearly.  “A _compulsory_ sobriety group.  You have a court order to be here, as does everyone else in the group.”  One or two heads in the circle nodded in agreement.  “AA is a voluntary organisation and believe me, I am _not_ a volunteer.  Do you see the distinction?”

Trevor stood with his arms folded, nodding intently.

“Mmm, ok, I see.  Thanks for clearing that up for me.”  He stopped nodding.  “So what _does_ AA stand for?”

Dr Friedlander narrowed his eyes and his face crinkled in confusion.

“…Their name stands for Alcoholics Anonymous, but like I said-”

“Yeah, you said, I get it!” Trevor interrupted, his tone abrasive.  “But this is _kind of_ an AA meeting, isn’t it?” His dark eyes scanned the faces in the circle.  “Isn’t it?” he asked no-one in particular.  “You can get all uptight about your labels and distinctions, but as far I see it this meeting’s got a circle of chairs, a bunch of weirdoes moaning about their problems, crap coffee, stupid _‘hi everybody’_ introductions… and it’s got addicts!  Or alcoholics, whatever.  The evidence is clear that this meeting is in the AA format, even if it doesn’t have their brand name, and it should therefore be acceptable to refer to it as such.”  Trevor suddenly turned and pointed aggressively at Michael, causing him to jump.  “He called it AA!  And those guys called it AA!”  The two men who had identified Michael flinched.  “Everyone here’s calling it what it is, so there’s no point in being so pedantic about it.”  Trevor exhaled roughly and unclenched his fists.   “I was merely enquiring if the group is only for alcoholics or if it deals with general purpose addicts like myself.”  He gazed intently at the doctor.

Dr Friedlander seemed taken aback at the abrupt change in Trevor’s tone.  “Oh.  Ah, w-well, yes.  Yes, we do deal with… general purpose addicts.  Wh-what other substances have you been-”

“But seriously, Alcoholics Anonymous is a really stupid name,” Trevor continued, ignoring the doctor’s question.  “Why exactly is it called _anonymous_ when the first thing we have to do is give our names?  Maybe I want to be anonymous - where’re our masks and secret identities?  Now I can maybe deal with the burden of not being anonymous, but for the _celebrity_ in our midst…”  He turned and smirked at Michael.  “It’s definitely not anonymous for him, is it?  It’s not, in fact, anonymous in any way, so that would make the name alcoholics _anonymous_ a clear case of false advertisement.  Especially if it deals with more than just alcoholics!”

Dr Friedlander gave an exhausted sigh and rubbed at his temple with his fingers.  “What exactly is your point, Trevor?” he asked, his tone sharp.

Trevor spread his arms wide and grinned at the doctor, his eyes huge and manic. 

“Why does everything have to have a point?”  He barked a laugh that echoed through the room.  “Can’t a man lament on the loss of integrity of the advertising standards in this country without being judged?  I’m just saying that Alcoholics Anonymous should rename themselves…”

He gestured grandly.

“Addicts!  Just addicts! Not AA, just A.  It’s upfront, it’s honest, and everyone knows what it’s about.  It’s a much-”

“TREVOR!” interrupted Dr Friedlander.  “Just tell us why you’re here!  This stalling tactic is a classic manifestation of denial!”

Trevor stopped.  His face contorted into a scowl.

“ _Denial?_ ”he hissed.  “I’m not in _denial._   I drink!  Yeah, that’s right!  I drink and I snort and I’ve injected and I’ve inhaled things I shouldn’t have and I’ll smoke anything that’ll catch fire.  I’m a user and an addict and I _absolutely fucking love it_.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees.  Dr Friedlander opened his mouth, closed it, then spluttered a reply.  “Th-that’s really not something you should be saying-”

“WHY NOT?” Trevor barked, pacing back and forth inside the circle of chairs like a caged animal.  “Huh?  Why shouldn’t I say that?  You just told me I shouldn’t be in denial, didn’t you?  I’m denying nothing.”  He stopped pacing and sneered at the doctor.  He then spoke slowly, relishing every syllable.  “I freely admit that I was recently discovered in a comatose state on the floor of toy shop covered in a variety of bodily fluids and wearing nothing but a smile.”  He paused and glanced at the faces around the circle and, on seeing them make the appropriate looks of revulsion, continued with his tale.  “Going by the smell, they’d assumed it was a coyote that’d got in and left the mess on the floor and ripped up all those cute little teddy bears but _nooo_ , it was all Trevor.”

He grinned like it was something he was immensely proud of.

“The owner of the place was pretty pissed, as you might imagine, but we managed to come to an agreement.  I would pay to replace the window, the locks on the doors and the display of SnuggleCuddle Bears, as well for extensive cleaning of the premises and a little bit extra to cover emotional trauma.  I would also receive court-mandated therapy for my various addictions and personality flaws, and in return the court wouldn’t go snooping around in my private and professional affairs.  Not too bad a deal, I have to say, it could’ve been a lot worse.  I could’ve gone back to prison again, and I only just got out.”

He nodded contentedly.  Suddenly his face then twisted into a grimace and the menacing edge returned to his voice.

“Although you know what really sucks about this whole arrangement?  I don’t even live in Los Santos!  Seriously, I came into this pisshole city on business and I just happened to be driving past that toy shop.  It was all lit up and pretty and pink, how could I resist?  That’s when I found those adorable little bears – who were _literally asking to be cuddled_ – and then one thing led to another and they make me go to AA meetings here!  I live in Sandy Shores!  It’s like a three hour drive – more if the traffic’s shit and let’s face it, the traffic’s always shit around here – and I’m gonna need to do that as a round trip twice a week for…  for I don’t even know how many weeks!”

He turned his head sharply and nodded conspiratorially at Michael.

“So don’t you worry, _bro_ , I feel your pain.  You don’t get to go to your fancy Rockford Hills rehab resort and I can’t go to AA meetings in Sandy Shores.”  He clenched his fists and started pacing again.  “Argh, if I had to go to AA somewhere I was hoping it’d be there.   I’ve heard stories about those meetings, ooh-ho, it sounds _incredible_.  It’s basically just a big ol’ bragging session, everyone trying to one-up everyone else with their drinking stories and trying to be the most insane and shocking one there.”  He snorted.  “Well, they haven’t met Trevor Philips.  I _live_ for insane and shocking!  Those rednecks wouldn’t even know what hit them if I showed up there!”  He growled and looked like he wanted to punch something.  A few people tried to shuffle away in their chairs.  “And I’m being denied that wonderful therapeutic experience by being stuck here!  Stuck in this freezing church in my least favourite city in the world being helped by a- a washed-up psychiatrist, a washed-up football player,” he pointed aggressively at Isiah and Michael, “and a bunch of other addicts who don’t really wanna be here.”  Trevor gestured wildly at the rest of the circle.  “Argh, I hate this!  You can all fuck off and die.”  He spun around and flopped back down onto his chair with a scowl.

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence.  Michael’s face was stony and impassive, and sat hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees, trying to avoid eye contact with Trevor.  It looked like the rest of the circle was trying to do the same.  Everyone seemed to suddenly be fascinated by the ceiling tiles or the floorboards or their phones, their eyes cast anywhere and everywhere in the room except in the direction of the angry new member of the group.  After a while Dr Friedlander spoke quietly.

“So… thank you for introducing yourself Trevor.  I-I see we have quite a lot of work ahead of us in tackling your… issues.  It won’t be an easy task for either of us, but we’ve made that first step today and, well… it’s a start.”  He glanced at his watch.  “I see our session is nearly over for the evening.  Those introductions took a little longer than I expected, but I think we have time for a short discussion.”  He smiled in the direction of everyone who wasn’t Trevor.  “Does anyone have anything they would like to say?  Any recent experiences you would like to share with the group?”

One young man raised his hand eagerly.  The doctor gestured towards him.

“Ah, John.  What would you like to tell us?”

John got to his feet and glanced warily towards Michael and Trevor.

“Uh, yeah, I just wanted to say something to the new members.  It’s real nice to meet you both, I’m John, and I was six months sober last week.”

He dug a small silver chip out of his pocket with a bright “6” stamped on it and proudly held it aloft.  A few people clapped.   Trevor rolled his eyes theatrically. 

“So yeah, it’s not been easy getting to six months.  I’ve had a few ups and downs along the way, times when I’ve been really tempted to go back to drink.  I’ve always struggled with those temptations, so I just wanted to say that after listening to both your introductions… particularly Trevor’s… well, I think it’s really motivated me to stick to sobriety.”  He let out a small, incredulous laugh.  “I think that story may have finally put me off drink for life!”  He placed one hand on his chest and beamed at Trevor.  “Any time I find myself tempted by alcohol I can just picture myself lying naked on a toy shop floor, covered in my own filth, and I’ll tell myself that is what’s waiting for me if I ever go back to drink.”  He closed his eyes and shuddered.  “I mean – Jesus – my little girl has one of those SnuggleCuddle bears!  I’ll never get that image out of my head now!  H-How am I supposed to be able to tuck her in tonight with that thing staring at me from her bed?”  He grimaced and pinched the bridge of his nose, then lowered his hand and gazed at Trevor.  “Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks.  I don’t think I’ll ever be tempted to drink again.  I’m might finally be free.”  John sighed deeply and lowered himself back onto his seat with a look of complete contentment on his face.

Trevor watched John from across the room with narrowed eyes.  He slowly uncrossed his arms, grabbed the seat of his chair and pushed himself onto his feet.  He then clasped his hands together and tilted his head to one side.

“Aww,” he drawled, “Thank _you_ , John.  That was such a sweet thing to say.”  He turned to Michael, his voice going high and childish.  “Isn’t that sweet?  He’s thanking us for being so repulsive!  How nice of him!”  He scowling eyes snapped back to John and his voice returned to its usual gravelly tone.  “How absolutely _fucking adorable_.”

Trevor clenched his fists and growled.  Michael bolted upright in his chair as he realised what was going on and was up on his feet before Trevor had taken two steps.  He slammed one arm across Trevor’s chest and grabbed the clenched fist with his other hand, pinning Trevor in place.  Trevor snarled and tried to wrestle free, but he was held firmly in Michael’s grip.  John had bolted from his chair as soon as Trevor had moved and was now cowering against the far wall beside the coffee and cakes, along with the rest of the group and Dr Friedlander.  They backed as far away from Trevor as they physically could, using the plastic chairs as barriers or in some cases as makeshift weapons.

“Get back here you piece of shit!”  Trevor yelled at John, the fury burning on his face.  “Let me see how far I can shove that chip up your ass!”

Michael shook Trevor harshly.  “Knock it off!” he growled in Trevor’s ear.  At this distance his stench was almost unbearable.  Trevor wriggled against Michael’s grip and tried in vain to snatch his hand free.

“That smug prick insulted me!  Insulted both of us!  He thinks he’s _sooo_ great with his stupid chip and his six months and his ‘ooh, let’s all look down on Trevor!’ attitude.  He thinks he can use me as some kind of benchmark for rock bottom!  I’ll show you rock bottom!  I’ll have you know it took a lot more than just alcohol to get me into that comatose state!  It took a whole lotta-”

“Oh would you shut up!” Michael roared and shook Trevor again.  “It’s a support group, Trevor!  You’re supposed to gloat to everyone about being sober!  You’re supposed to be smug about it!  That’s what support groups are for!  Let it go!”

“Yeah, man, I’m sorry!” squealed John from the other end of the room.  “I didn’t mean it as an insult, I swear!”

Trevor snarled like a rabid dog, but he eventually stopped struggling and went slack in Michael’s grip.  Warily, Michael let go of Trevor’s right hand and shoved him back swiftly, but not roughly, with his other hand.  He took a step to one side so that he stood between Trevor and John, and then flexed his shoulders and puffed out his chest.  Trevor closed the gap between them with one stride and the two men glared at each other, their hands clenching into fists and their faces almost touching.   The others in the group watched on from the edges of the room, clearly terrified but not making a sound.  A leering grin spread across Trevor’s scarred face.

“Look at you, mister big-shot football star.”  His voice was quiet and icy.  “Gotta protect the brave little sober man from the crazy guy, huh?  Michael Townley, champion of justice and defender of the weak.  Is that what you think you are?”  He snorted loudly.  “You look like you’re enjoying yourself far too much for that.  I bet it’s been a long time since you got a chance to tackle someone – you want to fight me?  _Do you?_ ”  He leaned in towards Michael’s ear.  “I bet that’s all it is, isn’t it?  You don’t give a rat’s ass about protecting your little buddy John over there.  You just want to punch something.”

One corner of Michael’s mouth turned up.

“Starting to sound real tempting right about now.”  He tilted his head slowly from side to side and jutted out his chin towards Trevor.

Trevor mocked Michael’s movements and the stand-off continued, neither making the first move.  After a moment Trevor took a step back from Michael, slowly looked him up and down and then nodded a few times, his eyes not leaving Michael’s. 

“Yeah, I’m familiar with the ‘I want to punch something’ feeling,” he muttered, “I feel that way every day.” 

The room was silent.  After an uncomfortable pause Dr Friedlander spoke.

“W-well, this is great!   We’re talking about our feelings!  This is all very healthy and I would definitely encourage it at any other time, but right now I would like you both to end this little stand-off.  I think we would all like to call it a day on this meeting, and personally I would like to go home and have a lie down.”

Neither Trevor nor Michael made any sign of acknowledging the doctor, and continued to glare at each other instead.  Trevor stood with his arms crossed against his chest and his head slightly to one side, and after a moment he snorted and unfolded his arms. 

“Yeah, I’m done with this shit.”

He turned from Michael and headed towards the door.

“S-see you on Thursday Trevor!” Dr Friedlander called after him.

“Yeah, sure,” replied Trevor without turning around.

With Trevor gone the tension in the room began to dissipate.  Michael stood in the centre of the circle of chairs and looked towards the open door with his eyebrows raised.  A small bemused smile began to spread across his face and he laughed softly to himself.  These meetings were going to be a lot more interesting than he’d expected.


	2. An Intriguing Opportunity

“Alright everyone, I think we have time for one more discussion before the end of the meeting.  Is there anyone else who would like to share an experience with the rest of the group?”

Dr Friedlander glanced around the circle of bored faces.

“No?  Well, how about we hear from one of our newcomers from the previous session?  Michael, Trevor?  Neither of you have contributed to the group this evening – and no, Trevor, your juvenile comments regarding Randy’s situation do _not_ count as contributing.  What about you, Michael?  Is there anything you’d like to get off your chest?”

Michael had been sitting with his knees wide apart and his head bowed towards his folded arms.  At the doctor’s question he raised his head with a grimace and unfolded his arms, then lifted one hand up to scratch absentmindedly at the back of his neck.  He let out a deep breath.

“You know what, doc?  Yeah, there is something that’s been eating at me these last few days.  I didn’t bring it up, ‘cause it wasn’t something that was directly caused by drink… but yeah, I guess it might have been a contributing factor.  It was mostly me that started this thing though.  Me and my big ego and my short fuse.”

Dr Friedlander nodded encouragingly.  “Go on Michael, tell us what happened.”  He lowered his eyes to his watch.

Michael pushed himself onto his feet and cleared his throat uncertainly.  “Uh, well like I said it might have mostly been me who caused this situation, but my wife has to be at fault as well.  Amanda and I… we’ve been having problems lately.  I mean, we always _did_ have problems right from the start, they’ve just become so much more obvious now that I’m retired and sitting at home on my ass all day.”

He ran a hand wearily through his hair, and then kneaded the heel of his hand into his temple as if to clear a headache.

“See, back when I used to play I would be away from home a lot of the time.  My day would be taken up with early morning training sessions and late nights at the gym, or I’d be out partying and celebrating with the team - and that was whenever I wasn’t out of town and living out of hotels.  Even at the best of times we never really had much of a home life together.  Hell, I feel like I barely know my own kids sometimes, I missed so much of their childhoods.  Football was my whole life - right from when I was a little kid I could never imagine doing anything else – and I ended up neglecting my family for the sake of my career.  Now that I no longer _have_ a career it’s like… sometimes it feels like I have nothing worthwhile left in my life at all.” 

He lowered his eyes and let out a deep sigh. 

“I’ve been sitting on my couch, drinking scotch and watching daytime TV for three months straight ‘cause there’s literally nothing else I want to do with my life.  There’s nothing else that gives me that… that…”  His hands clenched as if he was trying to physically grab the word out of the air. “That _adrenaline_ that I used to get from playing.  I miss that satisfaction that comes from winning, and then celebrating with the team.  I miss what it feels like to train for something – to be always aiming for something, always working for the win.   And the rush you get when you finally get that win and you hear the roar erupt from the crowd?  Ahh… man, there’s nothing like it.”

He smiled softly, but there was pain in his eyes.

“I tried to carry on a career in football after I stopped playing, I really did.  I tried getting into coaching - that’s what everyone said I should do after retiring.  They said I should be out there training up the next generation and passing on my skills, and there should be some satisfaction in that, right, knowing that you could be the coach behind the next star player?  There should be, yeah, but I just couldn’t get into it.  I hated being on the sidelines too much.   I just felt left out of the action.”

Michael pinched the bridge of nose and shook his head.

“Anyway, what was I saying before?  Oh yeah, about this thing that happened with my wife.  Putting it bluntly, she was cheating on me and I caught them in the act.” He shrugged nonchalantly.  “I wasn’t actually that surprised that she was being unfaithful.  I mean, I was out of town so often I figured she probably had to have someone on the side, or even lots of someones on the side, but it was just one of those things we would never bring up.  The sleazy elephant in the room.” 

He nearly laughed at his own metaphor. 

“I thought that if I didn’t confront her for her little flings, then _she_ wouldn’t confront _me_ for the various strippers and hookers and girls from bars I’d invited back to my hotel rooms over the years.  That was our unspoken arrangement.”  He paused for a second and furrowed his brow.  “When I say it out loud I guess it does sound like a pretty weird arrangement, but we were both benefiting from it and, yeah, I was mostly ok with it.  But it turns out there’s a big difference between _assuming_ that you and your wife are being unfaithful to each other, and actually _seeing_ it happen.  And it’s a whole lot worse when you know the guy too.” 

Michael clenched his fists at his sides and his expression darkened.  

“Her boytoy was the Magnetics’ new quarterback - their upcoming star.  I’d been there when he was drafted and I’d helped coach the guy from day one - I’d told him he was the best rookie we’d had in years!” He was almost shouting.  “And yeah, he was younger than me.  Fitter than me too.  He’s a better quarterback now than I’d ever been, and the car I saw him banging my wife in cost at least four times as much as the car I drive.  So… I lost it.  Just saw red.  I marched right up to that car, pulled the door open and grabbed him and Amanda and threw them out onto his driveway.  Then I got in the car – probably the only time in my life I’ll be behind the wheel of a Pegassi Infernus – and I revved the engine like a nutcase and drove it into the guy’s pool.” 

He held up his hands in admission. 

“I can’t even blame alcohol for this one.  I’d had a glass of scotch, yeah, but no more than usual, just enough to get me through the day.  It’s not like I was drunk or anything.”  He slowly shook his head.  “No, this one’s all on me.  I’m the one who has to pay for the supercar I ruined… as well as the cost of fishing it out of the pool… and for the repairs to the pool and the garden and the fence and… oh yeah, there was the window I threw that stupid little statue thing through as well.  Apparently I owe the guy five hundred thousand dollars now.” 

He gave a weary laugh and shook his head in dismay. 

“Five hundred thousand!  Where am I supposed to get that kind of money from?  I’m retired and mortgaged up to my eyeballs, I can’t just pull six-figure sums out of my ass!  And come on, who buys a supercar and then doesn’t insure it properly?  What kind of idiot takes out insurance that only covers accidental damage?  The guy’s a fucking dick!  If I hadn’t been the one to cause _malicious damage_ to that car then someone else would have!  How could he be so stupid!?  This is partially his fault!”

Michael gripped his hands against the back of his head and exhaled roughly through clenched teeth.  He then bowed his head and released his fingers, scraping his fingernails painfully along his scalp as he dropped his hands back to his sides. 

“Why did I have to go and wreck that prick’s car… how could _I_ be so stupid?” 

Michael clenched his hands into fists and angrily bit on his lower lip.  He looked as if he wanted nothing more than to continue his rant, and shout and scream and swear at everyone in the room about everything that had gone wrong in his life until the session ran out, and then to get up and kick over the nearest chair and flip over that table and then maybe sink his fist into the wall too just for the hell of it.  But he didn’t do that.  He closed his eyes instead and exhaled slowly through his mouth in one long steady breath.  He relaxed his shoulders, unclenched his fists, and then opened his eyes.  He looked utterly exhausted.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am well and truly fucked.  I have no idea where to get that kind of money from.  I’ll probably have to sell the house and my car.  I’m sure Amanda will just love me for that… if she and the kids ever come back anyway.  As far as I see it I don’t have any other options.”   He laughed humourlessly.  “I guess I could rob a bank to get the money – I mean how hard can that be, they do it in movies all the time!”  He laughed again, stronger this time.  “Or does anyone know about any diamonds I can steal?  Fine art?  Jewellery?  ‘Cause grand larceny is pretty much the only option I have for paying off this prick that doesn’t involve me auctioning everything I own.”

To his right Michael heard Trevor laugh quietly and mutter something under his breath.  It almost sounded like “that can be arranged.”  Michael’s brows furrowed and he cast a sideways glance at Trevor.  Did he really just say that?  Good to know someone was finding his pain so amusing.

Dr Friedlander cleared his throat upon hearing the lull in Michael’s rant, and stood up and nodded in his direction.

“Ok, that’s wonderful, really great… thank you for sharing that with us Michael,” he droned, and looked back down at his watch.  “We only have a few minutes left before the end of the session, so in the interest of moving this along would anyone like to offer any quick advice for Michael?  Anyone… ah, Kevin!  What advice would you give Michael?”

A stocky man in a plaid shirt hoisted himself out of his chair and let out a chesty cough.  Michael glanced around uncomfortably as if he wasn’t sure if he should sit down or not, and after a moment’s indecision chose to remain on his feet.  Kevin began to speak in a torturously slow, monotonous voice and Dr Friedlander cast another concerned glance at his watch.

“Hi Michael.  My name’s Kevin.  Sorry about your wife cheating on you, and the thing with the guy’s car.  That sucks, man.”  Kevin nodded sympathetically.  “I can’t offer any advice about that and hey, I don’t know if I’m the best person to be giving out advice about anything, but I just wanted to point out something you said in your story.  You described yourself as needing alcohol to ‘get you through the day’, and I just wanted to say that… I’ve been there, man.”  He placed a hand on his heart.  “I’ve been that dependent on alcohol to get me through the day too.  You might think it’s normal or that it’s harmless to need a drink every day, but it’s really not normal.  I think if you’re gonna be sober you need to-”

Dr Friedlander tapped his watch and interrupted Kevin.

“That’s 9 o’clock, looks like we’re out of time!  I guess the advice that Kevin was about to give to Michael can be top of the agenda for next week’s session.”

Kevin slowly sat back down in his chair after his abrupt dismissal by Dr Friedlander.  He began to dejectedly tidy up his discarded cake wrappers, and looked a little like a kicked puppy. 

“Stay sober, everyone!” continued Dr Friedlander, “I’ll see you all next Tuesday.”

As the other people in the room started to get up from their chairs and gather their things, Dr Friedlander called out again.

“Oh, and don’t forget to stack your chairs against the wall when you leave!  There’s an under-10s ballet class using this hall after us and I don’t want to get another telling-off from Mistress Kerzhakova like I did last time.  That lady is, quite frankly, terrifying.  So do me a favour and tidy up after yourselves and stack your chairs neatly against the – that means you too, Trevor!  Get back here!”

Michael turned to see Trevor saunter out the door without a backwards glance, having abandoned his chair and the small pile of plastic coffee cups around it.  Michael shook his head in weary disapproval and took the time to put his own chair away, deliberately avoiding Trevor’s mess.  He then grabbed his messenger bag from the floor, nodded and said goodbye to a few people that he passed and then left the room. 

As he stepped outside into the fading warmth of the late evening he dug around in his messenger bag, pulled out a large pair of designer sunglasses from their sleek metal case and put them on his nose.  Readjusting the bag on his shoulder, he then took his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans and felt his heart sink when he saw no messages from Amanda or the kids.  It had been three days now.  Maybe he should-

“What’s with the douchebag sunglasses?”

Michael jumped and spun around to find Trevor’s face at his right shoulder.

“It’s almost night.  There’s no sun out.  Why are you wearing sunglasses when there’s no sun?”  Trevor leaned in closer to Michael’s face and narrowed his eyes suspiciously.  “Are you high?  ‘Cause if you’re high you’re pretty good at hiding it.”

Michael stared at him incredulously.

“No.  I’m not high.  Seriously, who would turn up to an addicts’ support group high?”

Trevor threw him a knowing glance.  Michael rolled his eyes and tried to suppress a groan.

“Well, if your stunt in the toy shop is anything to go by then maybe _you_ would.  I’m not into any of that shit though - alcohol’s my only vice.” 

“You haven’t lived,” said Trevor sincerely.  Michael snorted a laugh.

“You know, they should take you into schools to speak to the kids,” he said with a grin, “You’d be such an inspiration.”  Still smiling, he reached up to adjust the sunglasses on his nose.  “And the thing with the sunglasses?  I always wear these when I’m outdoors, even if it’s raining or at night.   It’s a pretty common thing to do for celebrities in LS and I got into the habit years ago.  They help to hide my face in case someone recognises me.”

Trevor raised one eyebrow and the corner of his mouth curled up in a sneer.

“Oh _really_ , in case someone recognises the _big celebrity_ Michael Townley?” he scoffed.  “In case you get held up by a huge crowd of adoring sports fans and groupies as you’re going about your daily business?  That’s a legitimate concern for you?”

Michael looked confused and a little embarrassed.

“Well… yeah.  I was quarterback for the San Andreas Magnetics for seven years, and I played for a few different teams in the Midwest before that.  People do recognise me.”  He spread out his hands and shrugged.

Trevor continued to stare incredulously and then, with a mischievous smile, he shuffled a few steps back and started pointing excitedly at Michael.

“Oh my GOD!” he yelled out in his best ‘dumb jock’ voice.  “Is that MICHAEL TOWNLEY?” He glanced dramatically around him as people on the street began to turn and stare.  “ _Dude_ , I can’t believe it!  It’s Michael Townley in the flesh, right before my eyes!  Check it out, _bro_!”

Michael watched in horror as he was slowly surrounded by a gaggle of curious pedestrians, as well as a few drivers who had slowed down to investigate the source of commotion.  He watched as one-by-one their faces turned from excited, to confused, and eventually to disappointed.  A few gave him prolonged stares as if they were struggling to place where they knew him from, but not one of them seemed to know exactly who he was.  As the crowd started to disperse, a middle aged woman passing by on the other side of the street cast a glance in their direction.

“Who the fuck is Michael Townley?” she grumbled to no-one in particular.

Trevor’s head snapped from the retreating crowd to the woman with a look of utter delight spreading from ear to ear, as if someone had handed him an present that he’d only just realised he wanted.  He snorted obscenely and then threw back his head and let out a booming laugh that echoed down the street.  His laugh went on and on until Michael started to feel the urge again to punch Trevor, but it faded eventually to leave behind a large and obnoxious grin.  Trevor turned back to Michael with the stupid grin still on his face and, on seeing the other man scowling from behind his oversized sunglasses, only started laughing again even harder than before.  When Trevor began to struggle for air he wiped a tear dramatically from his eye and then reached over and slapped Michael hard on the back, causing the other man to stumble forward.  Michael grimaced and rolled his shoulders to relieve the stinging spot between his shoulder blades where Trevor had struck him, and then folded his arms grumpily and continued glaring in Trevor’s direction.  With that insufferable grin still on his face, Trevor waved in the direction of the woman and hollered across the street.

“Oh God, I LOVE YOU LADY!”  The woman spun around with a look of alarm. “Thank you _so much_ , I think my friend really needed to hear that!  I love you!  Let me hug you!”

Trevor bolted across the street in the woman’s direction, his arms outstretched and his face manic.  She let out a startled scream.

“Get away from me, you freak!”  She took a step back before turning and running in the opposite direction.

An uneasy feeling of concern for the woman’s wellbeing crept into Michael’s chest, but quickly dissipated when he saw Trevor stop in his tracks in the middle of the road and wave cheerily at the woman’s retreating figure.

“Call me!  I love you!”

A car honked aggressively at Trevor as he stood in the road and the driver was rewarded with a flipped bird from each hand followed by a string of expletives and lewd suggestions.  Trevor then turned away in disgust from the terrified driver and sauntered back towards Michael, and the furious look on his face shifted back to one of delight.

“ _Sooo_ Mr Big Celebrity.  People recognise you, do they?  Sure looked like there was a lot of recognition going on there!”

Michael stood with his arms folded and his face impassive.

“Fuck you.”

Trevor kept grinning.

“Why are you even here?” asked Michael grumpily.  “You were in a hurry to get out of that meeting, what are you doing hanging around out front?”

Trevor shrugged nonchalantly.

“Maybe I just wanted to chat to my good buddy Michael.”

“We’re not good buddies, I barely know you.  What do you want?”

Trevor groaned and dramatically rolled his eyes.

“Alright, fine.  Maybe I wanted to offer my good buddy Michael some gainful employment to help him out in his current financial predicament.”  He sighed as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Michael’s eyes widened in surprise.

“What?  You can help me?” he asked eagerly.  He then raised an eyebrow.  “What exactly do you mean by ‘gainful employment’?”

Trevor seemed a little confused.

“You were the one who brought it up!  You were the one talking about robbing banks and jewellery stores in front of the addicts!  All I’m doing is suggesting the possibility of an opening into such opportunities.”

Michael blinked a few times and shook his head in dismay.

“W-WHAT?   You’re seriously offering me a part in a-” he yelled, before lowering his voice to a whisper.  “You’re offering me a part in a _heist_?  Wh-what I said before – I was joking!  It was a joke, it was obviously a joke, I wasn’t actually thinking of committing a robbery!”  There was a hint of panic in his voice.  “Unless… what kind of ‘opportunity’ are we talking about here exactly?”

Trevor’s face lit up in excitement and he leaned in closer to Michael until their shoulders were touching.  Michael suppressed a shudder and - casting a quick glance around them - tilted his head in towards Trevor.

“It’s a simple in-and-out job.  I just need someone to step in as a last minute replacement for one of the crew.  The score’s been planned out for weeks already and I had a crew ready to go for tomorrow night but… I got a call from one of them today.”  He sighed in disgust, and Michael recoiled as his vile breath brushed against his neck.  “Stupid sack of shit got himself arrested last night and he used his one call from prison to tell me.  I’m not even sure what happened, he didn’t explain it very well and to be honest I wasn’t really listening, he just said he’d been arrested and I was supposed to come bail him out.  WHY would I bail him out!?”  Michael flinched when Trevor shouted so close to his ear, and leaned a little away from him.  “He should be grateful I haven’t broken into his cell and ripped his skin off for fucking around the night before a job!”  Michael felt that warm breath on his neck again as Trevor snorted like a bull.  “Anyway,” he continued in a normal tone, “his loss is your gain.  You interested?”

Michael stared straight ahead, his eyes wide and unfocussed, and his mouth hung open.  He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in dismay.

“Yeah… sure… w-what would you need me to do?” 

Their entire conversation was completely surreal.  It was like something out of an action movie - all this talk about crews and heists and scores.  Michael could picture it in his head: a well-trained crew in sharp suits and ski masks, briefcases full of high-tech equipment, blueprints of a bank vault laid out on a desk-

“I need you to run real fast and carry a bag, that’s it.  You think that’s the kind of thing a former football player could do?”

Trevor’s question brought Michael back to reality.

“What, is that all?  Yeah, I can do that.”

“What do you mean _‘is that all’_?” snapped Trevor.  “You really think I’d ask an unknown rookie to do anything else?”

“Yeah… I guess not.”  Michael shook his head slowly, still in a daze.  Had he really just signed himself up for a robbery?  Was he really so desperate for cash that he would stoop as low as stealing... “Wait, what exactly is this score, anyway?”  he asked, then glanced around at the people passing by them on the street, “and shouldn’t we be talking about this somewhere more private?” he added in a whisper.

Trevor stood back and folded his arms, tilted his head to one side and slowly ran his gaze over Michael.  “Private, huh?” A lecherous smile spread across his face, and he leaned in close to Michael’s neck and inhaled deeply.  “If you wanted to go somewhere _private_ , you should have said,” he purred.  He ran his tongue along his teeth.

Michael’s breath hitched in his throat and he took a step away from Trevor.  “A-ah, yeah… no.  I… uh… I-I just meant that I’m parked a couple blocks from here.”  Why was he getting so flustered?  The guy was obviously just trying to make him feel uncomfortable.  “We could talk about this ‘opportunity’ in my car, and not on a busy sidewalk where anyone could hear us.”

Trevor kept grinning and nodded intently.  “Back seat of a car… a classic.  I like it.”

Michael’s heart pounded in his chest and he really hoped he wasn’t blushing.  He had a feeling Trevor would make fun of him for the rest of time if he blushed at one of his lewd suggestions.  He scowled, and hoped this stupid exchange would be over soon.  “Shouldn’t you be taking this more seriously?  This is _your_ job you’re asking me to join.”

Trevor’s eyes widened and he inhaled through gritted teeth.  He took a step forward until they were eye-to-eye and then jabbed one finger hard into Michael’s chest.  “I will have you know that I am ALWAYS serious about work.”  He jabbed again.  “Deadly serious!  I am a professional and business-like individual, the CEO of my own company and purveyor of many quality goods, and if you want to discuss the details in your car then fine, we’ll discuss it in your car!”  He turned and stomped off down the street.

“I’m parked this way.”

“Fine!”  Trevor spun around and walked back towards Michael with a scowl.  “Lead the way!” he spat, throwing his arms up into the air.

They walked side-by-side in silence.  Michael racked his brain trying to think of something to say to break the tension.  What were you supposed to talk about with someone – someone known to be a drug-addled psychopath – who was offering you a part in some kind of heist?  Nice weather we’ve been having lately?  He couldn’t ask him about the job –

“So why did no-one recognise you back there?” asked Trevor with genuine curiosity.  “I thought you said you used to be some big-shot star player?”

Michael looked straight ahead and did not answer Trevor’s question, continuing to walk in silence.  Although… why shouldn’t he answer him?  Trevor had only known him two days, but even in that time he had already seen him at his worst.  He probably saw him for what he really was: an alcoholic, washed-up football player with a violent temper and a broken marriage and an empty bank account.  What was the point in telling him the same half-truths as he told everyone else he met?  Michael took a deep breath in and then let it out in an exhausted sigh. 

“Truth is… I _was_ a big-shot star player, but my glory days were all back in the eighties and nineties.  I might have been with the Magnetics for seven years but I spent almost all of the last three years on the bench.”  He ran a hand roughly through his hair.  “Back in the day I would always have been the starting quarterback, without fail.  Then the years passed and the roster kept getting younger and younger every season, and I noticed I was getting described as a ‘veteran’ player more often, and then one day I realised I was the oldest player on the team.  Next thing I knew I got bumped down to second-string quarterback, and then to third-string a year later.  Yeah, I was the reserve in case the reserve couldn’t play.”  He snorted.  “I might have officially retired from football six months ago but my career had been on life-support for a long time before that.”  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and wrinkled his nose.  “It… it kinda hurts to point that out to people, though.  If I meet someone who doesn’t really follow football then I usually only tell them about my glory days, and just skim over the rest.”

Michael’s eyes were cast down as they walked and he didn’t look at Trevor beside him.  He adjusted his sunglasses on his nose and scratched at the side of his face, and exhaled deeply before continuing.

“It’s true what I said about being recognised though – I really do get people coming up to me on the street.  The only thing is it’s never a sweet little kid looking for an autograph anymore – these days it’s always some thirty-something dickwad with severe body odour.”  He scowled and a menacing edge entered his voice.  “They come up to me out of nowhere and start talking to me like they’ve known me for years.  It’s always negative stuff too, like criticising a play I made back in 2006, or telling me how that fumble I made in ‘97 ruined our chances for the entire season, or he’ll enlighten me with a blow-by-blow account of how he would have done it so much better _if only he’d been there_.  It’s always the freaks now, the anal nutbags with nothing better to do with their lives than obsess over every mistake from every game.”   Michael clenched his hands into fists, as if there was an anal nutbag standing right in front of him.  “They’re the ones I’m trying to avoid with these sunglasses.  I _wish_ I was surrounded by fans and groupies.”

They walked for another half block in silence.  Trevor then growled a laugh beside him.

“People really get that obsessed over football?  Fucking nerds.  Football’s just a game - something on TV to watch when you’re bored but too drunk to change the channel.  It’s nothing but a bunch of people running around in puffy shirts and tight pants, grabbing balls and slapping each other on the ass.  That’s the only thing I watch it for anyway, for the homoerotic spectacle of it all.”

“Homoerotic?” Michael spat incredulously.  “Are you fucking kidding me?  The NFL has to be one of the least homoerotic places in the world – I think most of the players would rather have their toenails ripped out than have someone call them ‘gay’.  Seriously, you look at a guy in the locker room for just one millisecond longer than what could be described as a passing glance, and everyone starts treating you like you’re a fucking child molester.”

Trevor raised his brows at the sudden bitterness in Michael’s voice.

“Touchy subject?  Hmm, good to know.”

They carried on in an uncomfortable silence.  After another half block Michael tugged some keys out of his bag and unlocked a black Tailgater parked ahead of them.  Michael let himself in and sat on the driver’s side, then reached over to clear away a few burger wrappers and empty cans from the passenger seat and waited for Trevor to get in beside him.

“Nice car.  Fancy.” muttered Trevor as he sat down.  Michael wrinkled his nose.  Trevor’s odour was far more concentrated in the confined space, and Michael started to regret inviting him into his car.  He tried to ignore the smell as best as he could.

“So, uh… now that we’re here, do you wanna tell me about this score you have planned?”

Trevor’s face lit up with enthusiasm.

“Sure thing, Mikey, let’s discuss details!  Putting it simply, the heist we’ve got planned is to rip off a jewellery store.  Or, to be more exact, we’re ripping off a jewellery store before it _becomes_ a jewellery store.”

He nodded intriguingly.  Michael gave Trevor an exasperated look.

“Is the store in question some kind of Transformer?”  He grinned and almost laughed at his own joke.

“Ha.  Funny guy.  I obviously meant that we’re planning to steal the jewellery while it’s being transported and before it arrives at the store.  Basically, there’s a new Pavlovski jewellery store opening soon in Rockford Hills and their entire stock is getting shipped over from their headquarters in Russia as we speak.  The container arrives at the port of Los Santos tomorrow night, so the plan is that we’re going to break into the port, empty the container and do the good people of Rockford Hills a favour by giving them fewer shiny things to waste their money on.”

“Ok…” said Michael hesitantly.  His brow furrowed.  “Wait, is that really going to work?  If they’re transporting all of their stock at once then wouldn’t a container that valuable have armed guards?”

Trevor nodded animatedly.

“Why yes, as a matter of fact they do have armed guards.  Under normal circumstances Pavlovski would employ an armed escort for the container from the moment it leaves their HQ up until the point when it’s loaded onto the freighter.  Once it’s on the freighter it would then be protected by the shipping company’s security team, and then once it arrives in Los Santos the crates inside the container would immediately get transferred – again under armed escort – to an armoured security van and then taken to the store.  So yes, there’s a lot of security.  But because we are clever and organised professionals we have thought of a plan to get the container away from any guards.” 

Trevor proudly grinned at Michael.

“One of our crew has hacked into the customs paperwork for the shipment and made a few choice alterations – typos and numbers that don’t add up, stuff like that.  That should be enough to make the paperwork suspect and give customs a reason to detain the container at the port.  Now, I know from personal experience that the security at the port is laughable.  Any large shipments delayed by customs just get stored out in the open protected by one patrolling guard, one security camera and one barbed wire fence.  All we need to do is get to the port, wait for the guard to pass us or take a piss or something, then we’ll cut through the fence and our hacker will disable the camera.  She can only switch it off for about ten seconds at a time without arousing suspicion – hence the need for you to run real fast – but that should give us just enough time to run across the yard and reach the container doors, where we’ll be out of view from the camera.  Once there we’ll break open the locks on the doors and get inside, and since the camera can’t see us we can take our time to clean out the crates.  We’ll take as much as we can carry in a duffel bag each, and then our hacker can switch the camera back off to give us another ten seconds to make a run for it.  Like I said – an in-and-out job.  No heat, no fuss, no problems.”

Michael nodded in comprehension and a faint smile began to light up his face.  Hope bloomed warmly inside his chest.  This plan sounded like it could work - he might actually be able to pay that prick off for his car without bankrupting himself and put this whole mess behind him.  There were still a few important details he wasn’t clear on though.

“What do we do with the jewellery?”

“Oh, I know a guy who knows another guy, you know how it is.” Trevor waved an unconcerned hand.  “We just drop off the bags at a secure location and he’ll deal with it after that, removing the stones and melting down the metal and so on.  All we have to do is wait a couple weeks while they work their magic and then one day we’ll receive a substantial payment from a mysterious offshore account.”

“And how much will that substantial payment be?” Michael asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Hmm, going by the customs paperwork the hacker reckons the shipment’s worth about four million to us-”

“Four million!  F-For real?  Oh man, four million dollars!”

“Woah Mikey, calm your tits.  You didn’t let me finish.  The shipment could be worth _up to_ four million, _if_ we’re able to carry the entire contents of both crates out in just two duffel bags.  And even if we do manage to lift that much, the crew need to get their cuts too: 20% for the guy who deals with the intel and fencing, and 15% for the hacker.  As for you – a rookie and an unknown factor and a potential liability – you would get 4%.”

Cold disappointment washed all over the hopes in Michael’s chest.

“4%?  That seems pretty low.”

“P-pretty low!?”  Trevor spluttered.  “4% of a potential four million dollar take seems _pretty low_?  You stuck-up little entitled shit!  You could earn a hundred and sixty thousand dollars for one night’s work – on your first ever job – and you’re turning your nose up at that?”  Trevor’s dark eyes burned inches away from Michael’s face.

“No!  No, I’m not turning my nose up at it.”  Michael threw up his hands and instinctively shrunk a little away from Trevor.   “I’m desperate for cash right now - having that much money is a godsend, really.  It’s just…”

“It’s just _what_?” Trevor spat.

“I’d be doing exactly the same job as you – grabbing the jewellery from the crates and running out while the camera’s turned off.  Wouldn’t it be fairer to split the rest of the take a bit more evenly between us?”  The furious look on Trevor’s face was starting to make Michael feel genuinely concerned for his own safety.  “I mean - don’t get me wrong - I’m not expecting 50:50 or anything but… what about 10% for me?”  He tried to make his face as impassive as he could, and ignored the urge to cower away from Trevor.

“10%!” Trevor snarled, “Someone’s got a high opinion of himself!”  He continued to glower at Michael, but after a moment he then threw back his head and groaned loudly.  “Argh, fine!  It’s last minute and I can’t carry it all by myself, and I really cannot be assed finding someone else.”  Trevor rolled his eyes and sighed.  “I will stretch my generosity to the absolute limit and give you a 7% cut.”

“Are you sure I can’t-”

“Don’t push it Michael,” Trevor growled.  “You’re getting 7%, and I would rather shoot you and sell your kidneys than give you one more percentage point of this take.”

Michael nodded, his eyes wide.  “O-ok.  A 7% cut is great.”  He felt a surge of pride that he had actually managed to negotiate a better cut with a psychotic criminal.  “That would be… uhh… roughly how much money?”

Trevor pondered for a moment.

“Two hundred and eighty thousand.”  He raised a hand to interrupt Michael when he saw he was getting overexcited again.  “But like I said before, that’s assuming everything goes perfectly to plan _and_ we manage to take the full score _and_ then sell it at a high price.  Don’t start getting all ungrateful on me if you end up getting less than that – you’ll still be able to pay off a lot of your debt with one night’s work.”

Michael nodded and couldn’t help but grin.

“Wow, _two hundred and eighty thousand dollars_ ,” he said slowly, relishing the sound it made in in his mouth.  “That much money… ahh man, that would really change things for me.”  He couldn’t seem to stop smiling.  “I got a good feeling about this.  Yeah, this can really work!  What time do we start?  What do I need to do for tomorrow?”

Trevor shrugged.

“Nothing, really.  You don’t need to worry your pretty little head - I’ll take care of everything.  You just gotta meet me outside the docks.  You know that bridge heading into the port of Los Santos?  Yeah, I’ll be parked somewhere around there in the van with the hacker from about midnight or so, just look out for us and knock on the side of the van when you’re ready.  Hmm, what else?”  His nose wrinkled as he pondered.  “Oh yeah, make sure you wear dark coloured clothes, but don’t turn up looking like a fucking ninja, alright?  Wouldn’t be the first time a rookie’s done that.  Oh, and mute your phone too - again, wouldn’t be the first time that someone’s mother decided to call in the middle of a job.”  He scratched at the side of his face.  “Hmm, now I think about it, it was the same rookie who committed both of those offences actually.  I think I ended up burying him in that ninja outfit.”

Michael raised an eyebrow.  He wasn’t entirely sure if Trevor was joking or not, and thought it was maybe better not to know.

“Other than that,” continued Trevor, “No… I think that’s it.  Nothing else I need to say before the big day tomorrow.  You up for this Mikey?”

Michael grinned and nodded enthusiastically.  Excitement and adrenaline bubbled through him in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d retired.

“Fuck yeah, I’m up for this!”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should confess that I learned everything I know about American football in the better part of an afternoon on Wikipedia. I apologise if that was obvious.


	3. An In-and-Out Job

The sky over the port was dark and overcast with only a thin sliver of moon poking through the clouds.  It was well after midnight and the wind was starting to pick up, causing the waves to slap a little harder against the walls of the dock, and the air to be noticeably chillier.  Michael pulled his leather jacket tighter around his shoulders, and tried to convince himself it was just the cold that was making his hands tremble.  Everything had gone according to plan so far.  Cutting through the barbed wire fence had been easy enough, although he had nearly lost part of his jacket while squeezing through the hole, and he could now see the shipping container that held their score from where he and Trevor were currently hiding behind a low concrete wall.  Trevor had pointed out the ID number from the customs paperwork stamped onto the red painted metal of the container’s side, and then to the location of the container’s double doors.  The doors they would soon be breaking open. 

High above the container, Michael could just make out the shape of the security camera in the gloom.  It had taken about ten seconds of increasingly frustrated pointing by Trevor before he had finally seen it.  The camera was situated high on the wall of a warehouse behind the container and they had been informed by their hacker, a woman named Paige, that the view from the camera covered only the rear of the container, not the doors, as well as a good part of the dockyard they would soon be running across, and a section of the concrete wall they were currently hiding behind.  She’d reassured them that the camera could not rotate, it could not see the messy hole they had made in the fence, and it would not be able to see them once they moved into cover in front of the container doors.  Michael exhaled deeply and reassured himself again that everything was going according to plan.  Everything, he should say, apart from one important factor.

“Is this guy _ever_ going to move?” grumbled Trevor in Michael’s ear.

A snort of laughter from the only security guard on duty floated lazily on the wind towards them from the far end of the dockyard.  The man was texting enthusiastically with both hands, and even from that distance Michael could clearly see the smug smile plastered across his face, as if whatever tale he was telling with his thumbs was the funniest, most amazing story that ever existed.  The guard was pacing in slow, lazy circles as he typed, and when waiting for a reply he would look up from his phone and gaze broodingly out to sea, or up at the moon, or over at the row of containers, or occasionally right towards their hiding place behind the wall to scare the shit out of them. 

After the third time this happened, Michael began to hate the security guard with a passion he reserved for few others.  He didn’t even have any idea what this all-important conversation was about.  The last 20 minutes had consisted of nothing but the noise of frantic typing followed an irritating alert tone, and then the inevitable snort of laughter from the guard.  Occasionally they would overhear a comment on the contents of the message, which had so far included insights such as ‘dude, that’s sick’ or ‘ _damn_ , bro’.  The guy had to be wrapping this up soon; there couldn’t possibly be anything else to add to this conversation that hadn’t been covered in the previous 20 minutes… _oh God no_ , he just snapped a picture of himself flashing some kind of gang sign with a slack jawed grin across his face.  Michael groaned under his breath and out of the corner of his eye he saw Trevor reach for his gun.

“Trevor, no!” he hissed.

“Oh please, I’d be doing everyone involved a favour.”  Despite his words Trevor returned the gun to his jacket, pouting as he did so like a child denied his favourite toy.  “And I thought I said you’re to call me ‘T’ while we’re on a job?” he asked accusingly.

“Fine, _T_.”  Michael sighed irritably.  “The guy can’t be planning on taking selfies for the rest of the night; we just need to wait this out.  It’s bad enough I have to take part in a jewel heist to make ends meet, I don’t want to become an accessory to murder too.”  He smirked a little.  “At least not on my first ever job.” 

Trevor rolled his eyes.

“Ugh, if you’re going to be so precious about a little bit of collateral damage then fine, we’ll wait it out.”  He scowled at his watch.  “He’s got ten more minutes to wrap it up, and then _I’ll_ be the one wrapping _him_ up,” he growled, “In a plastic sheet.  After I kill him for talking on the phone forever when there’s a job to be done.”

* * *

 

Five minutes later Michael began to wonder if being an accessory to murder was really such a bad thing after all.  He was starting to get cramp in his right leg from crouching for so long and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to straighten out his back while keeping his head below the top of the wall.  Was it more comfortable to lean his back, or his shoulder against the wall?  Maybe it would be better to just to sit on the concrete rather than crouching like this.  Michael furrowed his brow and shook his head.  No, he felt like he should be ready to spring into action, or possibly run for his life, at a moment’s notice.  He just had to ignore the cramp and the muscle twinges and the pain in his lower back and - wait, should he be watching the guard right now?  Heart pounding, Michael snapped his head around to check on the guard, but everything was fine, Trevor had been keeping an eye on him.  He could handle it.  Michael relaxed the muscles in his shoulders and settled back into his crouch behind the wall, letting out the breath he had been holding.  All he had to do was wait.  Sit here, do nothing, and wait.  Tilting his head back, Michael screwed up his eyes and let out a long, inaudible sigh.

Despite his best efforts he couldn’t seem to stop his hands from shaking - when he held them up to his face he could _see_ them shaking - and he hoped that Trevor wouldn’t notice how nervous he really was about this heist.  He flashed a sideways glance at the other man, but he seemed completely fixated on watching the texting security guard, his eyes peering over the top of the low wall like a crocodile watching its prey.  Michael raised an eyebrow when he saw that Trevor was fidgeting behind the low wall almost as much as he was, and he found himself strangely comforted by the sight.  Could Trevor be nervous about the heist too?  A muscle was twitching in his face and he was continually shifting his weight from one knee to the other and back again, and scratching at his face and his neck and his arms with his filthy fingernails and… actually, now that he thought about it, Trevor was _always_ fidgeting.  It was a fidgeting that came from chronic impatience and an extreme reluctance to sit still for longer than a minute.  So no, Michael thought to himself, it wasn’t nervousness at all.  It was just Trevor being Trevor.

The corner of Michael’s mouth curled up into an amused smile and he turned from the man beside him back to his own trembling hands, then closed his eyes and took a few slow breaths in and out while Trevor wasn’t watching.  How he wished he had Trevor’s confidence in this.  It was bad enough knowing that what they were about to do was incredibly risky and illegal as hell, as well something that Michael had no experience in whatsoever, but it was _agonising_ to just be sitting there, waiting for it all to happen.  What if someone saw them right now?  A couple of guys in dark coloured clothes carrying duffel bags, hiding behind a wall at the docks in the middle of the night?  Anyone with eyes could see they were obviously up to no good.  They were sitting ducks out here!  They had to get a move on soon or Michael would… would probably end up shooting the guard himself just so they wouldn’t be trapped there anymore.  At the thought, his hand involuntarily went to the metallic bulge underneath his jacket to make sure it was still there, and he really hoped that he wouldn’t end up having to shoot anyone tonight.  A grimace crossed his face; he was coming close to hyperventilating. 

Michael tried to control his nerves by running through the plan one more time in his head.  It had sounded simple enough when Trevor had explained it, hopefully it would be just as simple to carry out.  When the guard eventually moved on to patrol the other dockyard, Trevor would contact Paige.  Apparently the hacker had already accessed the dockyard’s security systems earlier in the evening, so at the signal from Trevor she would be able to remotely switch off the surveillance camera above them, allowing them to run like hell towards – Michael popped his head up just above the wall to follow the route they would take with his eyes – they would run towards the front of the container doors where they would be out of view from the camera.  That was supposed to take them just ten seconds.  He pursed his lips and counted out the seconds in his head, nodding slightly as he did so.  One…two…three… four… Yeah, he knew he could run that distance in that time.  A faint smile tugged at his mouth at the thought, calming his shattered nerves for a moment.  All he had to do was pretend he had the ball with only ten seconds left on the clock, and the other team’s defence was coming for him. 

Michael stiffened as he felt a firm tap on his shoulder from Trevor.

“Hey, cell phone’s in the back pocket!  About fucking time!  Looks like he’s moving on to the other yard.”

Michael felt the blood drain out of his face, and his heart began to pound with what he hoped was adrenaline and not terror.

“W-what?” he stammered, before composing himself.  “Does that mean we’re good to go?”

Trevor nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, I think so.  I’ll check in with P.”  He put a finger to his ear.  “Hey P, how’s the view from the camera?  …Yeah, we’re good here too.  Mmn… alright, wait for my signal.”  Lowering his hand, he turned to grin at Michael and slapped him hard on the shoulder, leaving his hand there in an iron grip.  “You ready to do this thing M?”

Michael stared into Trevor’s eager face.  He could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears and every muscle was shaking to the point where he was barely able to control it.  It was like the moment before kick-off all over again.  That’s right, it was exactly like game time… except far more dangerous… and a lot more illegal.  He took a shuddering deep breath.

“Yeah.  Ready.”

Trevor squeezed the hand that rested on Michael’s shoulder, although his grip was too fierce to be truly comforting.  Their faces were inches apart.

“We only get ten seconds, remember?”  Trevor’s eyes bored into Michael’s: encouraging and enthusiastic and silently begging him not to fuck everything up.

Michael began to feel confidence rekindle in his chest and he gave Trevor a genuine smile. 

“Ten seconds to cover that distance?  Easy.”  The grin on his face spread a little wider and he nodded confidently at the other man.

“Alright, that’s what I like to hear!”  With a grin to match Michael’s, Trevor released his shoulder and straightened up as best as he could.  “Let’s do this thing!”  He reached into his pocket, tugged out a crumbled balaclava and began to pull it down over his head.

“Yeah, let’s do this!” echoed Michael as he put on his own mask.  He readjusted the strap of his bag securely across his torso in preparation, before he huffed another few breaths and shifted into a ready position behind the wall.  He nodded across to Trevor, who returned the nod and settled into a pose similar to Michael’s.

_“Do it, P!”_

Trevor vaulted over the wall and Michael followed close behind.  They sprinted across the yard, clutching at their swinging duffel bags, feet pounding on the cracked concrete of the yard.  Michael’s eyes were locked on the container in front of them – eyes on the prize – and only glanced up at the camera for a split second.  He felt so exposed running out in the open like this; he just had to trust that Paige had managed to turn the camera off for them, and if Trevor trusted her skills then he guessed he had no reason not to.  Closer and closer, they finally reached the container and slammed hard into the metal doors, first Trevor then Michael.

“P, we’re here!” Trevor hissed into the headset.  He jerked his head in a nod, panting for breath.  “Yeah, good work P.  Wait for our signal when we’re ready to come back.”  He turned to whisper to Michael.  “We’re good so far, P says the camera was turned off for only 8.3 seconds.  Now all we have to do is break into this bad boy,” he lightly drummed his knuckle against the metal door, “and get what we came here for.” 

Trevor lifted the strap of the bag over his head and rested it onto the ground, causing something heavy inside to clatter against the concrete.  He knelt down and unzipped the bag, pulled out a large bolt cutter and then set to work inspecting the padlocks for the best place to cut.  Michael felt a little useless as he watched Trevor at work, and his eyes began to flick nervously around him as he watched for the guard coming back.  The padlocks were made from thick sturdy steel and set snugly against the metal of the door, and they managed to put up a bit of a fight before Trevor was able to snap off first one, then the other. 

With the locks gone, Trevor returned the bolt cutter to his bag and straightened out his back, flexing the muscles in his shoulders a little as he did so.  He then began to pull and twist at the metal bars sealing the door, and did it with such practiced ease that Michael guessed this wasn’t the first cargo container he’d ever broken into.  One of the bars creaked loudly under Trevor’s administrations, and cold dread rushed through Michael as he pictured the security guard hearing the noise, and turning back around to investigate.  His fingernails ripped against sweaty palms as he tightly clenched his hands into fists, his gaze flicking to his left and right, and then behind him to the dockyard they had just crossed.  Every muscle was trembling and he tried to stop himself from bouncing up and down in impatience.  Was it really supposed to take this long to open an unlocked door?  What if it was jammed?  What if there was some other locking mechanism on the door that Trevor wasn’t aware of?  The guard would be coming back soon; they had to get inside that container now!  Another creak came from the door and Michael let out a small involuntary noise – higher pitched than a gasp and dangerously close to being a squeal.  He held his breath, eyes wide.  He really hoped Trevor hadn’t heard him.

“Arrgh, would you chill the fuck out?” Trevor growled beside him, turning his attention from the stubborn metal bars to scowl at Michael.  “I’ve got this, alright?”  He turned back to the door, shaking his head a little.  “I seriously thought you’d be able to handle pressure better than this.  You must have been a twitchy, squealing mess before kick-off back in the day.”

Boiling anger surged through Michael, washing away his nerves.

“Fuck you, I’m not the one taking forever to open an unlocked door!” he hissed.  “And for your information I could handle the pressure before a game just fine.  That was just pure adrenaline back then, if anything it made me play better.  _This_ -” he gestured vaguely towards his body, “is stress from knowing that I’m doing something ridiculously illegal and we’ll both go to jail for a long time if we’re caught.  I’ve never done anything like this before in my life, so yeah, I’m gonna be a little jumpy!  Sue me!” he snapped.

Trevor shook his head condescendingly.

“Yeah, whatever, just don’t throw up on me.”

With one final twist the bar sealing the door slackened and the door swung ajar.

“See?” sneered Trevor.  “Told you I’ve got this.”

He straightened up and began to pull the door open, but was stopped by Michael abruptly grabbing at his arm.

“Wait!” Michael’s eyes were wide.  “If you open that, won’t the camera be able to see the top of the door when it swings out?”  He gestured with his head towards the camera high above the container.  Trevor shook his head nonchalantly.

“Ah, it’s fine.  I thought of that when I was scoping the place out, so I asked P about it and she said the camera’s too low to see it.  You’re thinking like a pro though, M, that’s what I like to hear!” 

Michael nodded stiffly at Trevor’s words of reassurance and let go of his arm, but his eyes were as wide as before and under his balaclava his lower lip was starting to bleed from biting on it so often.  At a nod from Trevor he stepped to the side and allowed the other man to pull on the handle and slowly swing the container door open, wary for any more creaks.  Trevor then stepped inside the darkness of the open container, and his hand went to his pocket to pull out his phone.

“Close the door behind you, M, and I’ll turn on the flashlight.”

Michael stepped hesitantly into the container and pulled the door behind him until it was barely ajar, plunging the inside of the container into pitch darkness and leaving just a thin sliver of light from the dockyard’s floodlights outside.  It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the point where he could make out the soft glow from the screen of Trevor’s phone, and was then abruptly blinded when the phone’s flashlight turned on.  He threw up a hand to shield his eyes, and once the discomfort passed he slowly lowered his hand and hesitantly blinked his eyes open.

The container was small and cramped with painted white walls, and at the centre of the space there sat two large wooden crates, exactly as described in the customs paperwork.  Each crate was secured to the floor with a series of sturdy black straps crisscrossing over the crates and fastened to black metal rings protruding from the floor.  Through the straps, Michael could make out the ornate lettering of the Pavlovski logo inked onto the side of the wood, along with its legendary black heron symbol.  This was it - this was their score, right in front of them!  Michael grinned and breathed a sigh of relief, and the anxiety he had felt for the entire night began to harden into what he was more familiar and comfortable with: adrenaline.  He strode across to the first of the crates, footsteps echoing strangely in the confined space, and began to inspect the straps covering the crates.

“Any idea how to detach these, or do we just cut them off?”

“Hmm,” came Trevor’s voice from behind him.  “In most cargo containers you can just unhook them by hand.  See there?”  Michael turned to see Trevor point towards one of the metal rings.  “You have to loosen the little twisty bit first, and then you can hold that button down and lift it right off the ring.  I’ll do the ones on this side, and you can take the ones over there.”

Trevor dropped his bag onto the floor with a clatter and placed his phone carefully beside it, the beam from the flashlight shining up and out to fill the container with surreal, ghostly shadows.  Between the two of them they made short work of unhooking the straps across the first container. 

“Breaking into the crates is a little less delicate,” said Trevor as he pulled a crowbar out of his bag, “But it’s definitely more my style.”

He stabbed the crowbar between two slats of wood on the crate, and then pushed down with both hands to snap the first slat off in a shower of splinters.  Inserting the crowbar into the gap he had just created, he snapped off the next slat and the one after that.  Michael stood to the side and tensed against the noise of every slat breaking off and falling to the floor, and lamented that Trevor hadn’t thought to bring two crowbars.

With the front panel of the crate now lying in its component parts on the ground, Michael caught sight of their score for the first time faintly glittering in the light from Trevor’s phone.  The jewellery sat in organised, pristine rows on wooden shelves stacked inside the crate, each individual treasure snugly cushioned by a layer of moulded Styrofoam and topped with a transparent plastic casing.  Trevor shoved his arm into the crate and tugged out the first shelf, ripped the casing off easily and tossed it aside where it rattled against the floor.  He then thrust the shelf into Michael’s arms and turned back to the crate.

“Pick it clean and fill up your bag, ok?  I’ll make a start on this shelf.”

Michael carefully lifted a delicate silver locket studded with tiny diamonds out of its packaging, and held it in his hand above the gaping mouth of his open duffel bag.  It was so precious and beautiful and fragile: the kind of extravagance that at one time he would have bought for Amanda on a whim.  He had no need for such luxuries now.

“Is it really ok just to throw all this stuff in together?” he asked.  “If it all gets scratched to shit, will that not reduce its value when we sell it?”

Trevor turned from the tray he had just dumped into his bag to stare at Michael.

“Do you want to sit here all night covering everything in bubble wrap?  Yes, it’s going to get scratched to shit, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”  He turned back to the crate to begin emptying another tray.  “Just throw it all in together.  The metal’s going to get melted down anyway and the stones will still sell even if they’re scratched, so it’s not too much of a problem.  It’s time that’s our real problem though, so quit staring at the sparkly things and start clearing out those trays.”

Michael gave the locket a lingering, almost apologetic look, before he tossed it in the bag and dumped the rest of the tray’s contents on top of it.  Before long the first of the two crates was empty and their bags were sagging from the weight of the jewellery.  Trevor lifted his bag an inch off the ground with a thoughtful look on his face.

“Hmm, the weight isn’t too bad.  Looks like we’ll be able to split the second crate between us and still be able to lift the bags out of here.”

Clearing out the second crate took less time than the first.  Michael had winced on a few occasions on hearing the distinctive sound of a priceless gem being crushed under layers of metal, and he dreaded to think of the state some of the more fragile necklaces and earrings would be in at the end of the night, but they’d successfully managed to fit their entire score into two bags without the guard coming to investigate, and that was all that mattered.  Now they just had to get out of there.

Trevor hoisted the strap of the bag over his head, grimacing at the weight, and adjusted the bag against his chest.  Michael did the same, and grunted when he felt the weight of his own bag.

“Fuck this is heavy,” he muttered. “It feels like it’s ripping my shoulder off.”

“I know, who knew that all those tiny pretty things could weigh so much?”  Trevor gave Michael a look of genuine concern.  “Seriously though, are you ok to run like this?  It’ll take us a little longer on the way back than it did coming here with these weighing us down, and it’ll probably hurt like fuck too, but you know we can’t turn the camera off any longer than ten seconds or it’ll look suspicious.”  He locked his eyes on Michael’s.  “You have to run fast.  Run fast, and don’t drop the bag.”  His voice lowered to an icy whisper.  “If you drop the bag I will murder you.”

Michael crinkled his nose at Trevor’s lack of faith in him.

“Relax, I’ve got this.  After all I’ve been through tonight I’m not dropping this bag for anything.” He laughed.  “And I’m pretty sure I’m stronger and fitter than you anyway, so if anything you’re the one we should be worried about here,” he teased, with a crooked smile across his face that Trevor probably couldn’t see through his balaclava.

Trevor clenched his hands into fists and narrowed his eyes menacingly at Michael.

“Fuck you, it was a legitimate concern.” He shoved Michael to one side as he passed.  “Let’s just get out of here.”  With a scowl in his eyes, he silently pushed the container door ajar and peered out across the dockyard, then put a finger to his ear.

“Hey P,” muttered Trevor into his earpiece, “How’re things in the van?  Is the guard still in the other dockyard?”  He snorted a laugh.  “Still texting, huh?  We’ve probably got all night to make our exit then.  Wait for my signal, P.”  He lowered his hand and stepped out onto the concrete of the dockyard, then turned back to Michael.  “We don’t want them to know they’ve been robbed until tomorrow morning, so when we leave we need to close the door behind us so it’s not obvious the container’s been broken into.”

Nodding in comprehension, Michael followed Trevor out of the container and pulled the door closed behind him, twisting the metal bar back and forth until the seal tightened enough to hold the door shut.

“There’s not much we can do about the locks though,” Michael commented, glancing down at the twisted remains of the padlocks at his feet.  “I guess we can just sit them back on the door and hope the guard doesn’t look too closely.”

With the padlocks back on the door, the container looked almost untouched.  Michael grinned at his handiwork, and then cast his gaze across the seemingly vast expanse of dockyard.  The home stretch.  Michael felt his heart begin to race again and his breathing quickened.

“Good to go?” asked Trevor.

Michael nodded and settled into a sprinter’s ready position.

“Good to go.”

Trevor barked into his earpiece.

“Do it, P!”

They had taken only a few strides away from the container and across the yard before Trevor’s voice shouted out again.

“WHAT?!  We need that camera to stay off!  Do something about it, P!”

Terror and confusion flooded through Michael.  Was the camera off or not?  What were they supposed to do?  They were nowhere near the wall yet!

“Fuck!  Run, M!  The camera’s gonna turn back on any second!”

Michael had no idea what had just happened, but he knew that if the camera saw them then they were finished.  They might be wearing masks, but their images would still end up plastered all over the news tomorrow morning.  Everyone would see them, someone was bound to recognise one of them and then that was it; it was over, they were done.  Prison, punishment, scandal, humiliation.  He’d lose his home, his wife, his kids; he’d lose them forever.  He and Trevor would go to jail for a long time and they’d probably never see each other again.  No, he couldn’t let any of that happen!  _He wouldn’t let that happen!_

In one fluid, defiant motion Michael ripped the bag from his shoulders and tossed it aside, spun around to face the camera and reached into his jacket.  He grasped the warm metal of the gun’s handle, pulled the silenced muzzle up between himself and the camera’s gaze and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot from the silenced gun was not as silent as Michael had hoped.  It boomed out across the quiet dockyard, echoing and reverberating around the warehouses, and the camera exploded into a satisfying shower of sparks.  Michael remained frozen for a second, then lowered the gun and shoved it back into his jacket.  He bent to grab the strap of the bag from the concrete and hoisted it back over his head.

“W-what the fuck!”

Trevor had been a little closer to the wall than Michael, but he had turned around at the sound of the gunshot to stare at Michael in horror.  Their eyes locked for a moment, and after a brief hesitation they both began to sprint in the direction of the wall, adrenaline making the bags lighter than they had been a minute ago.  They vaulted over the wall to head for the hole in the fence, and Michael could hear Trevor muttering “fuck… fuck…” intermittently between gasps for air as he ran.  They hurriedly shoved the bags through the messy gap they had cut earlier and wriggled through themselves, scrabbled to their feet and then desperately scanned the empty road for Paige approaching in the van.  It wasn’t long before she pulled around the corner and drew up beside them, and they yanked open the rear doors and piled into the van, dropping the bags to the floor and slamming the doors shut.  The van accelerated and pulled away, leaving the dock and the scene of the crime behind them.

“WHAT THE FUCK!”  Trevor tugged the balaclava off, his dark eyes burning dangerously.  “What the fuck was that!?  What… You shot out the camera!”  He stared at Michael, the fury hot on his face.  “What did you do that for?  We were wearing masks, it wouldn’t have mattered if it had seen us!  You didn’t need to shoot it!  Everyone in the area will have heard that shot – the guard would have definitely heard the shot – you’ve put the whole job at risk!”

“WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?” Michael roared.  “There’s no way I could’ve let that camera see us!  We’d have ended up all over the news, and even with the masks on somebody might have recognised us.  And what about the cops, huh?  Did you even think of that?  The cops would’ve definitely seen the video, they’d use it in their investigation for fuck’s sake!  They’d know exactly what time the container had been broken into, how many people were involved, how much we’d taken, what our bags looked like, which direction we had escaped in…  They would know everything and they could use that information to track us down, so yeah, I shot out the camera!  I’ll admit the shot was a little louder than I thought it’d be - I’ve never fired a silenced pistol before - and I guess the guard probably would have heard it, but it’s still better than having the entire city watch a video of us running away from a crime!”

Trevor furiously jabbed a finger into Michael’s chest and opened his mouth to respond, but then snapped it shut into a tight, angry line.  He ground his finger harder into Michael’s chest, twisting it back and forth, and contorting his face to match.

“ _Well_ ,” he eventually managed to splutter, “Why didn’t you tell me you could shoot like that?  That was information vital to the success or failure of this job!  You should’ve told me you could shoot like a fucking secret agent!”

“You were the one who handed me a gun and told me I wouldn’t need to use it!”

Far off in the distance the sound of a police siren could just be heard over the rumble of the van’s engine.  The two men glanced at each other and a look of horror flashed between them.

“I guess the guard reported the gunshot,” muttered Michael, his eyes wide in fear.

Trevor held Michael’s gaze for a moment, before he lowered his eyes and held up his hands in admission.

“Ok, truth be told, I had no idea the shot would be that loud either.  The guy sold me a couple of _silenced_ guns, I thought it was safe to assume that they’d adhere to logic and, you know, actually be silent.”  He snorted in derision.  “But so what if everyone heard it?  A gunshot is just a gunshot.  This is LS for fuck’s sake, it means nothing here!”  Despite the confidence in his voice, his eyes were wide and worried and his foot tapped a frantic beat against the floor of the van.  “The cops will probably assume it’s just the usual gang violence or maybe a drug deal gone wrong, it’s not like they’ve got any reason to check out a bunch of cargo containers for potential burglaries.  We’re good, Pavlovski won’t know they’ve been robbed until tomorrow morning and by that time we’ll be long gone.”

The noise of the sirens continued for an agonisingly long length of time, but sure enough, they eventually faded until they were inaudible over the engine noise.  Michael stared straight ahead, his posture stiff and his eyes wide, listening and listening until he was certain he could no longer hear the sirens.  Slowly, imperceptibly, the corners of his mouth began to curl up.

“Did… did we just get away with a four million dollar heist?”

He turned his head to see Trevor grinning from ear to ear beside him, and he felt his own mouth spread into a grin to match.  He was suddenly filled with the urge to laugh and jump up and down, punch the air, and possibly even pull the weird, wonderful man beside him into a bone crushing hug.

“We just got away with that, didn’t we?”  Michael couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

Trevor nodded and grinned back.

“That we did, Mikey.  That we did.”


	4. An Unforgettable Night

“…our main news story this morning: a cargo container was broken into at the Port of Los Santos late last night and thieves made off with approximately four million dollars’ worth of Pavlovski jewellery.  A spokesperson for the LSPD described the heist as being ‘planned and carried out by professionals’, and no surveillance footage was recovered from the scene.  Police are appealing for anyone who was in the area between midnight and 3am to come forward…”

Michael stared blankly at the TV and slumped back against his living room wall, his legs suddenly unwilling to take his full weight.  He was dressed only in boxer shorts and a thin, threadbare robe, and he had been clutching a scalding mug of black coffee that had just spilled painfully over his hand.  It was hard to believe the news report was talking about something he had done.  Only the most serious crimes were reported on the news: the work of gangs and professional criminals, horrible things done by bad people.  He struggled to make the connection in his head between the terrible crime described in stern voices on the news, and the incredible adrenaline-pumping heist that he had performed with Trevor last night. 

Michael understood he had done something wrong last night, there was no doubt in his mind at all about that, but simply doing one bad thing didn’t automatically make him a bad person.  Did it?  True, he had helped to steal millions of dollars’ worth of jewellery, but it wasn’t as if he had been the one to plan the heist, or that he had chosen to do it purely for the fun of it.  No, the only reason he had taken part in the heist at all was so that he could pay off his ridiculous debt - a debt he should never have had in the first place.  Without the money from the stolen jewellery he would have lost his home for sure, and his family would never come back to him. 

Despite Michael’s attempts to reassure himself that he had been justified in taking the jewellery, a logical and nagging part of his brain told him he should feel guilt for what he had done.  That was what was supposed to happen when you did something morally wrong, after all.  However, after having spent nearly an hour that morning, standing in the shower with scalding water running over his face, he had grudgingly realised that wasn’t the case.  He felt no guilt at all for what he had done.  With a trickle of disgust in his gut, he accepted that he’d actually enjoyed the heist.  He’d enjoyed every single moment: from the stress of the initial stake-out, to their frantic escape from the docks, his first sight of the jewellery, and the exhilaration of shooting out the surveillance camera, and Trevor had been there by his side throughout it all.  It had been an incredible ride from start to finish and he had relished in every nerve-wracking detail.  Did _that_ make him a bad person?  Perhaps it did, and perhaps that was the very definition of being a bad person: a person to whom bad things started to feel incredibly and exhilaratingly _good_.

During his soul-searching in the shower that morning, Michael had briefly considered the impact the heist would surely have on the Pavlovski company, as well as on the employees of the shipping company and the docks, but he found that he couldn’t seem to dwell on the idea long enough to care.  All he could think about was his own absurd debt, and how far his cut from yesterday’s heist would go towards paying that debt off.  If Trevor’s estimate was accurate then his cut should take care of about half of his five hundred thousand dollar debt, and while it was a huge amount of debt to be paid off in one night’s work, it still left a lot of debt that, being retired, he had no means to repay.  No means to repay, he should say, other than by performing another heist.  Anticipation filled his chest at the idea, and with a satisfied smile he leaned back to settle his weight more comfortably against the wall.  He took a slow sip of coffee, his smile broadening into a grin.  He never thought he would ever look forward to his next AA meeting.

* * *

Trevor was only too happy to oblige with Michael’s request for another heist, and it wasn’t long before they found themselves crouching in a dark and quiet alleyway, watching the traffic on the busy street go by with empty duffel bags at the ready.  Ten minutes later they were sprinting away from the smoking, charred remains of a pair of armoured vans, clutching bulging bags of singed bank notes and, in Trevor’s case, a grenade launcher.  Michael’s blood had been pounding for the entire duration of the raid and, unlike at the heist at the docks, this time he was proud to say it was entirely from adrenaline and not at all from nerves or anxiety.  That successful heist had led to another, and then to another after that, and on the day that the six, wonderful digits of his payment from the Pavlovski heist appeared in his bank account, Michael began to wonder if these few weeks were the best of his life.  He certainly felt more alive and purposeful and… _free_ now than at any point in the last twenty years playing football.

The elation carried Michael through his otherwise empty days of retirement, and put a grin on his face and a swagger in his step that he hadn’t had in years.  He hadn’t thought for a moment that he would ever find something that he was genuinely good at after retirement.  And, if he did say so himself, he was _very_ good at the heists.  His years spent as a quarterback had left him skills that transferred surprisingly well towards the art of bank robbery.  He knew what it meant to assess a situation with a glance and run through every possible outcome in his head before making a play.  He knew how to intimidate: trash-talking, stare downs and posturing all had their uses off the football field, and helped to give Michael a presence that was imposing to even the toughest security guard.  He could now say with pride that he was as important to the success of their heists as Trevor was, and after some haggling and a heated argument and a few idle, but graphic, threats from Trevor, he had managed to negotiate an equal cut of their scores too.  They were literally partners in crime.

Michael’s new-found sense of pride and exhilaration was short-lived, however, and was soured intensely by his fifth heist.  He had accidentally shot someone.  It still hadn’t sunk in that it had actually happened.  He’d simply been keeping an eye on the customers and staff at the bank, who had been mostly cowering and compliant, while Trevor was emptying the vault.  The woman had come out of nowhere from behind him, reaching and screaming and grabbing at his arm and his gun, and he’d panicked and instinctively pulled the trigger.  He’d shot her and he knew deep down that he had probably killed her.  He hadn’t even bothered to look back at the time, they had just ran out of there with ringing ears and one half-filled bag.  After the heist a numbness had settled over Michael that just wouldn’t seem to go away.  Days later, when the feeling finally began to shift, Michael thought it was strange how little genuine remorse he now felt.  He had been expecting to be hit with a wave of crushing, soul destroying guilt for days now, and it had just not come.  He was perfectly aware of how horrible his actions had been – he had taken an innocent life, after all, and must have inflicted incalculable pain on the woman’s friends and family – but the feeling in his gut was something else, something closer to simple disappointment in his own mistake than any guilt over the death he had caused.  His own callousness surprised him.  Perhaps he really was a bad person after all.

Despite the terrible events of the fifth heist it wasn’t long before they were discussing plans for a sixth heist, and this was the one that would mark a special moment for Michael.  If this one went to plan, then this would be the payday that would finally pay off the last of his debt.  While it would definitely be a huge relief to no longer have a six-figure debt hanging over his head, he also knew that by paying the debt off he would no longer have a pressing reason for taking part in heists.  He wouldn’t be able to tell himself anymore that the heists were something that he needed to do, or that it was for the sake of his family, or that he had no other choice.  He would have to finally admit to himself that these days he was mostly doing the heists for the thrill of it.  And besides, it was easy money.  He still had a mortgage to pay off, and the kids had college funds that wouldn’t pay for themselves.  Maybe he would even be able to afford a new boat one day, or be able to replace Jimmy’s car which some asshole had stolen _right out of the garage it had been parked in_.  And other than the unfortunate woman at the bank, no-one else had been hurt by the heists.  Not really, anyway.  Trevor had waved away Michael’s concern for the businesses they’d hit with an uncaring hand, and had muttered something about ‘businesses these days’ and their extensive insurance policies, and that they were practically expecting to get robbed occasionally.  Michael wasn’t sure if he completely took Trevor at his word, but the idea was still comforting enough to reassure him whenever a hint of remorse began to trickle uncomfortably through his gut.

After the landmark sixth heist went off without a hitch and the realisation had finally sunk that the last of his debt had been cleared, Michael immediately went out afterwards to celebrate with Trevor, unlike on their previous jobs together.  A few rounds at the bar had led to a few hours at the strip club, and then to a long, drunken drive back to Rockford Hills, and to the winding curve of Michael’s driveway.  As the truck pulled to a halt, Michael tried to remember how long it had been since he had been able to cut loose like that on a night out and genuinely enjoy the company of another person, without worrying the entire time about his reputation with the guys on the team, or his image in the media, or advancing his career or… anything at all, actually.  Conversation had flowed easily between the two of them for the entire night, and despite the stress and exhilaration of the heist earlier in the evening it was amazing how utterly relaxed and comfortable Michael now felt.  He settled his weight into the cracked leather of the truck’s passenger seat and let out a deep breath.  He felt… satisfied.  Serene, even, if he was going to get all poetic about it.  Nothing could spoil this mood.  He didn’t even care that Trevor had parked the truck on top of one of his professionally landscaped flower beds, or that his front door was now missing a few panes of glass after being opened so forcefully into the wall of his hallway.  With a relaxed and easy smile on his face, Michael exited the truck and slowly climbed the steps up to the doorway, and observed Trevor poking at the ragged hole that the door handle had left in the wall, and carelessly flicking out pieces of crumbled plaster onto the floor.  He watched as Trevor straightened up and swatted a dismissive hand at the hole as if it had always been there, and then staggered off in the direction of the kitchen.

“So where’s this Scotch that’s supposed to be the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life?” Trevor called out, glancing around Michael’s kitchen in swaying, drunken confusion, as if he had been expecting the bottle to greet him at the front door with open arms.

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it.” Michael made a placating gesture with his hand, and staggered over towards one of the cupboards.  “You just sit your ass down on the sofa.”  He swept out an arm as he spun around to point towards the living room, and stumbled a little as he did so.  He gave sheepish grin.  “And it _is_ the best thing you’re ever gonna taste in your life.  There’s none of that Pisswasser shit you seem to love so much in _this_ house: I’m talking about a thirty year old, single malt, limited batch Scotch whisky.   The best there is.”

“The best for _me_?” said Trevor, pointing towards his chest in mock surprise.

“The best for you, baby!” 

With an easy grin on his face, Michael yanked open one of cupboards to reveal a neat row of bottles.  He pursed his lips and ran a finger roughly along their labels, causing a couple of bottles to wobble and chink against the others, and then pulled out a half-full bottle with an orange, ornately decorated label and laid it down on the counter with a little more force than he’d intended.  He poured the golden whisky into two small glasses, and tried to even up the volumes by sloshing more into one, then the other, then the first again until he eventually gave up.  He briefly considered adding water to the whisky: had he read somewhere that it _improved_ the flavour or _impaired_ the flavour?  He scrunched up his nose and deciding against adding water.  With a dangerously full glass in each hand he staggered back to the living room, spilling a little of the drink over his hand, and then handed one of the glasses to Trevor.  He ran his tongue over his hand to taste the spilled whisky; sharp and intense against his tongue.

“Best you’ve ever had.”  He nodded confidently to Trevor and held up his glass.  Trevor chinked his own glass against Michael’s.

“Cheers.”

Michael sipped at the golden liquid and swirled it in his mouth, inhaling slowly through his nose and marvelling at the range of flavours and aromas.  He swallowed the fiery liquid and lowered his glass to his lap with a soft, satisfied smile.  He glanced across at the man beside him.  Trevor had already downed his entire glass.

“Mmn, s’alright.  Doesn’t taste much different from a ten dollar bottle of Jakey’s.” 

Michael almost choked on his Scotch.

“W-What?  Are you kidding me?  Of course you can’t taste the difference if you just down it, you’re supposed to sip at it!  Savour it!”  Michael wrinkled his nose in disgust at Trevor.  “Unrefined fuck,” he muttered to himself, taking another sip. 

Trevor snorted and shrugged one shoulder.

“Aah, I guess I’m just not an expensive Scotch kinda guy.  It’s wasted on me, I’ll happily drink anything that’ll get me drunk and won’t make me go blind.”  Trevor cast a sideways glance at Michael, and looked almost uncomfortable under his disapproving glare.  “I mean, uhh, it wasn’t the _worst_ whisky I’ve ever had.  Definitely better than any Sandy Shores moonshine; that stuff really will make you go blind.  I’d rank this among the top five alcoholic beverages ever consumed by Trevor, and there’s a lot of competition for that, believe me.”  He nodded confidently at what he must have thought to be a great compliment, but on seeing Michael’s gaze darken into a full-on scowl he dropped his eyes and began to fiddle with his empty glass, rolling it back and forth between his calloused hands.  “Uhh, how much did that bottle cost anyway?”

Michael’s scowl faltered and turned into a look of embarrassment.

“Well… if you include shipping costs it came to… umm.” He cleared his throat.  “Just over four hundred dollars.”

“F-Four hundred dollars!”  Trevor nearly dropped his glass.  “Fuck!  Next time I rob a liquor store I gotta remember to take the liquor too.”

“Hey, four hundred is nothing for a quality Scotch!  You gotta pay a bit more to get the best!”

Trevor grunted in disgust and set his glass firmly on the floor.  He crossed his arms as he turned back to Michael, and a hardness appeared on his face that was close to being a snarl.

“Yeah?  Well, I’ve never been the kinda guy to pay more to get ‘the best’ when the basic version does just fine.  Give me a ten dollar bottle of Jakey’s over something fancy any day.”  A menacing edge had entered Trevor’s voice.  “Didn’t have much opportunity for luxuries growing up and I’m not gonna get into the habit now.”

Michael raised his eyebrows.  Trevor had never mentioned anything about his past to him before.  He thought it best to proceed with caution.

“So, uhh, things were tight growing up, huh?” Michael asked with genuine concern.  He certainly had enough experience of that in his own childhood.

“Yeah, _tight_ , you could describe it like that,” Trevor muttered bitterly. 

Michael followed Trevor’s angry gaze as he scanned the four walls around them.  He scowled at the gigantic TV in front of them and the leather sofa they were slouched on, at the artwork on the walls and the family portraits, and the empty box of Cuban cigars on the table.  Trevor then cast his gaze through the window and outside the mansion to the swimming pool and the tennis court, and beyond to the glittering lights of Los Santos.  “Nope,” he snapped, “Never any luxuries for little Trevor.  No fancy college education either.  I had to make my own opportunities.” He was almost shouting.  “I had to scrape by on what I could steal!”

Michael turned to face Trevor with a perplexed twist to his lips, his eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Wait, what?  You really think I grew up in a life of luxury?  Are you kidding me?  I wasn’t raised in Rockford Hills!  I wasn’t always living like this, and importing overpriced Scotch and puffing Cubans and- and living in a mansion with its own pool and tennis court!  Hell no, I’m trailer trash, through and through!”  Michael laughed incredulously.  The idea of him, growing up in a place like Rockford Hills, rubbing shoulders with the kids of millionaires and celebrities?  That was just surreal.  “And my ‘fancy college education’?  It was a football scholarship.  I didn’t pay a penny towards my tuition and every other cost got paid for out of my own pocket, courtesy of a series of shitty part-time jobs.”  He laughed again, but there was a bitter edge to it this time.  “There’s no way my old man would have ever paid for me to go to college, for football or for anything else.  He wouldn’t spend money on anything that didn’t involve him getting shitfaced at the end of the day.” 

Michael scowled at the memory and sighed in disgust. 

“If I hadn’t gotten accepted onto that scholarship I honestly don’t know what else I would have done with my life.  All I can say is my life woulda turned out a whole lot different from this though, that’s for sure.”  He gestured vaguely around him at his home, and everything in it.

Trevor stared at Michael, his mouth parted and his eyes wide, the anger from a moment ago nowhere to be seen.

“…Your dad was a piece of shit too?” he muttered quietly.

Michael nodded and shrugged.

“A steaming pile.”

Michael glanced down at the half-full glass in his own hand and swirled the drink inattentively against the sides of the glass.  He pondered for a moment, and then shrugged and quickly downed the whisky, grimacing at the burn spreading down his throat.  His eyes watered and he gave a rasping cough.  He then began to absentmindedly inspect his empty glass, turning it one way and then the other in his hands, watching a small bead of four hundred dollar whisky run back and forth along the bottom of the glass.  He wasn’t sure what to say.  Trevor was still staring at him, he could see him out of the corner of his eye and his gaze was starting to make him uncomfortable.  Should he _ask_ Trevor about his childhood?  It was clearly a touchy subject, and he didn’t want to inadvertently dig up something and spoil what had turned out to be a pretty amazing evening.  What else could they talk about though?

Fuck this, he needed a smoke.

Michael placed his empty glass on the table beside him and shifted in his chair to reach into his back pocket.  He pulled out a crumpled packet of cigarettes, tapped one out and held it between his lips as he fumbled in his other pocket for his lighter.

“Mind if I smoke too?” Trevor asked from beside him.

Michael’s brow furrowed as he tried to coax his lighter into life.  He didn’t remember ever seeing Trevor with a cigarette in his hand.  He turned his head.  Oh… so that’s what he meant.

Trevor had produced a small transparent bag containing a rounded glass pipe, a lighter and some small, off-white crystals that were scattered across the bottom of the bag.  Michael raised one eyebrow.  Had Trevor been carrying that bag around with him for the entire evening?  Maybe he’d stashed it in the truck somewhere and pulled it out when he hadn’t been looking.  Michael shrugged one shoulder and turned back to his own cigarette, bringing it to his lips briefly before curiosity tugged his attention back to the man beside him.  He watched as Trevor carefully pinched some of the powder surrounding the crystals using the tips of his filthy fingers, and dropped it into the ball of the pipe.  He then scraped his fingers clean against the rim and snorted the remaining residue from his hands.  Trevor then held the flame of his lighter under the pipe, which was charred black and brown from extensive use, and brought the pipe to his lips.  His eyes closed softly and time seemed to slow as he inhaled, the breath long and slow and savouring.  When he lowered the pipe from his lips and exhaled the smoke gently hung in the air for a moment, before a deeper breath caused it to swirl and dissipate into nothing, leaving only a faint bluish haze in the air. 

Beside him, Michael watched with growing fascination.

“What’s that like?” he asked, nodding towards the pipe.

“Mmn?  Speed?”  Trevor gingerly held the warm pipe between his fingers with a thoughtful look on his face, like an art critic evaluating a delicate sculpture.  “Speed is like… I dunno.  Like…” A line appeared between his brows and he clenched his other hand, as if he could snatch a perfect description out of the air.  “It’s like… fifty coffees and a blowjob.”  He tilted his head and grimaced, questioning his own words.  “Argh, something like that anyway, I’m not a fucking poet.”  With a scowl, he took another puff from the smoking pipe. 

Michael continued to watch Trevor, his gaze lingering on the pipe and the wisps of bluish smoke, before slowly being drawn towards the rough skin and scars on Trevor’s hands, and then resting on his chapped lips around the pipe.  Something twisted and knotted in his gut, and he swallowed shakily.

“Can I try?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah sure, knock yourself out.”  Trevor tilted his head and smirked at his choice of words.  “Though, ugh, not literally of course.”

Trevor warily handed the pipe across to Michael.  He reached out and took it, and stubbed out his half-finished cigarette into the ashtray on the table beside him.  The pipe was filthy and blackened, and as he brought it to his lips he caught a waft of its strange, unfamiliar smell. 

“Run your lighter under it first,” advised Trevor.  “Gotta bring that baby to life.” 

Michael turned to nod towards Trevor, but his gaze caught on something in Trevor’s expression, something that hadn’t been there before and made his breath hitch in his throat.  He wasn’t entirely sure what it was: something in the intensity of his gaze perhaps, or the angle he held his head, or the curve to his lips.  Whatever it was, it triggered something electric in Michael’s gut, an excitement that had nothing to do with recreational drugs.

He turned his head away from Trevor’s gaze and busied himself with his lighter, carefully brushing the flame against the bulb of the pipe, trying to remember and mimic what Trevor had done.  A wisp of smoke escaped from the end of the pipe, and Michael warily sniffed at it, then brought his lips over the mouthpiece and inhaled as he would to a cigarette.  As the smoke touched the back of his throat he spluttered out a rasping cough.  Dammit, he was like a teenager with his first cigarette.  With his eyes watering and a sick, slightly embarrassed feeling in his stomach he tried again, and brought the pipe to his lips to breathe in, more gently than before.  Satisfyingly, he managed to suppress the cough this time.  The smoke billowed out of Michael’s parted lips in a long, slow breath, his lungs burning with an unfamiliar sensation.  His pride was short-lived though, as however much as he tried he couldn’t suppress the tickle at the back of his throat when he breathed in again, and he spluttered out a fit of rasping coughs.  With stinging eyes and hoarse breaths he lowered the pipe and turned towards the man beside him.  Trevor was watching him curiously, his head to one side and his mouth slightly parted, eyes bright and intense.  His lips curled up into a smile.

“Here, lemme show you how it’s done.”

Trevor shifted along the sofa a little closer to Michael until their hips were touching, causing him to jolt in surprise, and he reached one arm up and over Michael’s shoulders.  His hand rested softly against Michael’s left bicep, his arm warm and heavy across his shoulders, and he reached up with his other hand to grab Michael’s hand holding the pipe.  Michael’s mind went completely blank, his heart hammering in his chest as Trevor brought their hands up to his own lips and slowly inhaled from the pipe.  The smell from his exhaled smoke mingled with Trevor’s own odour which, with him so close, was much more intense than before.  It filled Michael’s nose, inescapable and pungent and… strangely comforting.  It smelt like Trevor.  It was the smell of his partner, his friend, and the source of everything good and exciting in his life lately.  Michael closed his eyes and inhaled gently through his nose.  He felt his muscles relax, and he settled into Trevor’s touch. 

“Now you try,” muttered Trevor, his voice close to his ear.

Trevor let go of the pipe in Michael’s hand with a small offering gesture, and Michael raised the pipe to his mouth a third time.  He almost jumped with the sudden electricity that surged through him at the warm touch of Trevor’s hand on his thigh, just above his knee. 

With his heart pounding and his breath thick in his throat, a cold and logical thought flashed across his mind.  _This man is making a move on you_.  He had heard this voice in his head before, many times.  He had heard it in pubs and clubs, after games, or with fans, or in the locker room: anywhere where he had found himself tempted in the past.  He knew what the voice would say next.  It would say something like: _you shouldn’t be letting this man make a move on you.  You have to stop this.  You shouldn’t be enjoying this._   He knew it was coming, he had heard it enough times before to expect it.  But this time he was surprised at what the voice said next.

_What’s wrong with enjoying this?_

Well, that was new.  Michael almost burst out laughing against Trevor’s shoulder, and managed to turn it into a grin at the last second.  He felt good.  He felt amazing.  _He_ was amazing!  Why shouldn’t a man be making a move on him?  He was Michael fucking Townley!   Football player, celebrity, master thief, and all-round awesome guy.  Trevor was _lucky_ to be making a move on him!  The grin spread wider across Michael face and his gaze dropped to Trevor’s hand on his thigh.  The hand was rubbing along his thigh and up towards his knee, leaving behind warm, exciting trails where it went, forward and backwards, firmer and warmer and inching closer and closer to his crotch.  Michael’s gaze remained focussed on the wandering hand, the smile on his face lazy and lecherous, until the sudden touch of chapped lips to his throat brought him out of his reverie and almost made him gasp.  He closed his eyes and savoured in the warmth of it, the firm pressure of the lips hot against his neck.  The lips ghosted down towards his shoulder, and Michael groaned softly at the sensation of Trevor’s tongue there, wet on his collarbone.  Michael tilted his head into the touch, closer to Trevor, and relaxed the tense muscles in his shoulders to sink into Trevor’s side. 

_What is wrong with enjoying this?_

With a sudden movement, Michael shifted his weight and turned his body to face Trevor.  He leaned forward and forced his lips onto Trevor’s neck, grabbing his arm as he did so.  The hand that had been caressing Michael’s bicep grabbed the back of Michael’s neck and burrowed almost painfully into his short hair, pulling him in closer. 

Michael rose up, slightly disentangling himself Trevor’s grasp and grabbed Trevor’s shoulder.  He then reached across with his other hand to grab his other shoulder, and pushed himself up onto his knees.  He then brought one leg over Trevor’s lap until he was straddling him, and settled himself down onto Trevor’s lap, satisfied at the hard bulge he found there.  With short breaths and hands trembling with excitement, he stared directly at Trevor, eye-to-eye, gazing into that confident, lecherous face.  This was the man who had cheerfully led him into hell over the past few weeks.  This was the man had driven him into crime, into drugs, into everything that he had held himself back from his entire life.  This was the man who made him feel alive again. 

Michael leaned over and planted his lips firmly on Trevor’s.  For a moment they remained locked together, Michael’s hands tight on Trevor’s shoulders, Trevor’s grip firm on Michael’s neck, but he soon began to feel Trevor twist and pull away.  Trevor glanced to the side and his grip on Michael’s neck slackened a little.  A cold feeling spread through Michael.  Had he crossed some kind of line?

The coldness dissipated as Trevor leaned in close to Michael’s ear.

“Why don’t you do something a little more useful with that mouth?” Trevor muttered, his breath hot on Michael’s neck.

Michael’s insides squirmed as if they had been tugged on.  His breath was short and he tried to keep his voice steady.

“And why would I wanna do that?” Michael asked, just managing to put a teasing note in his voice.

Trevor leaned in a little closer, his voice low, a warm whisper on Michael’s ear.

“Because anything you do, I will _reciprocate_ ,” he whispered, lingering over the last word.

Michael mind went blank.  The stern, disapproving voice was long gone, replaced with flashes of deep buried fantasies.   Fantasies that could become reality tonight.  With his mouth parted, Michael nodded distractedly and slowly slid back from Trevor’s lap and settled his knees onto the floor.  He placed one hand on Trevor’s knees and pulled them slowly apart.  Trevor reached for his fly and Michael leaned slowly forward, and then down between Trevor’s thighs.

Outside in the darkness, a twig snapped softly, just audible over the sounds of the water slapping gently against the side of the pool.  Soon a few more twigs could be heard snapping, followed by the rustle of a bush, and then shadow appeared at the window.  It remained there for a moment, and then the stillness of the night was interrupted by the loud, mechanical noise of a camera shutter.


	5. An Ugly Situation

Michael drained the last of his coffee and tossed the empty cup into the trash before continuing along the busy street.  As he rounded the next corner, he caught sight of the familiar church steeple a few blocks away and felt a surge of genuine exhilaration at the thought of his next sobriety meeting.  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.  He wasn’t even going to pretend that it was the meeting itself that he was looking forward to: it must have been around five minutes into his first meeting when he’d realised that a state-sponsored, compulsory sobriety group was never going to do anything to change his drinking habits and a further eighteen meetings had certainly done nothing to improve his opinion on them.  No, there was only one thing that he was looking forward to inside that church hall, and that was who he was going to see there.  Trevor. 

Memories of the night they had spent together two days ago still caused his guts to twist uncontrollably in excitement, and his confident stride soon lengthened into a full-blown swagger.  He hadn’t seen Trevor at all since that night, and as he thought ahead to their meeting small niggling doubts and insecurities began to slowly dampen his enthusiasm, like raindrops splashing on an open fire.  Their night together wouldn’t do anything to ruin their relationship, would it?  Everything wonderful and exciting in his life lately seemed to be connected to Trevor in some way, and Michael didn’t even want to think about the possibility of things being awkward between them.  Oh God, he hadn’t said anything embarrassing that night, had he?  He pondered with bated breath, sifting through a string of blurred memories, flashes of passion and pain and pleasure.  Had he… had he really referred to himself as the ‘God of Fucking’ at some point during that night?  Oh, crap… he had, hadn’t he?  Michael grimaced and tried to suppress a groan.  That must have been the Speed talking.  Sighing, he smiled sheepishly to himself in the middle of the busy sidewalk.  If Trevor remembered that particular poetic nugget he’d never let him forget it.

Strangely, the flash of embarrassment did nothing to sour his good mood, and he shrugged his concerns off with a grin across his face.  He felt _amazing_.  Despite its occasional bizarre twists and turns, that night had released a lot more than just pent up sexual tension.  It was as if a great weight, so heavy it had been slowly crushing him and moulding him for years, had been finally lifted from his back.  For his entire adult life he had been repressing a significant part of his own personality to the extent that it had become second nature, and now that the unthinkable had happened – he’d actually gone and slept with a man! – he could now look back on all those years with a fresh perspective.  He now saw it with a sense of disbelief and frustration, almost anger.  Why he had even bothered resisting those temptations, particularly when he had given into other temptations so easily?  It hadn’t helped him in any way.  He had slept with a man and the world hadn’t ended – if anything the world seemed a little bit better.  The smile spread further across his face and a small laugh gusted out of him.

“Uhh, excuse me?  Are you Michael Townley?”

Michael snapped out of his reverie and turned in the direction of the voice, his eyes blinking in mild surprise.

“Hmm?  Yeah, that’s me.”

The man who had stopped Michael looked like he was in his early thirties or so, with a skinny build and a jittery look in his eyes, and wore a backwards cap perched on top of short greasy hair.  Michael slowly furrowed his brow.  _God, not another one_.  He only ever got stopped in the street by nerds and freaks these days, and it was never for anything good.  He began to mentally prepare himself for some sort of obnoxious critique on his days as a football player, and clenched his fists involuntarily as he did so. 

“Oh wow, it really is you!”  The man grinned eagerly at Michael, almost bobbing up and down in excitement.  “I saw you from the other side of the street and I just couldn’t believe it, I’m such a huge fan!  I’ve been following your career ever since you signed for the Bluejays back in ’87!  Do you think you could sign something for me?  I’ve got a picture in my bag I’d like to show you.”

Michael stared open-mouthed as the man began to rummage in the grubby messenger bag at his side.  An autograph, after all these years?  His fists unfurled and all of the cynicism he felt melted away.  This day was just getting better and better!

“Here it is, bro.”  The man slid a large white-backed photograph out from an envelope and held it out face-down to Michael.  “What do you make of this?”

Michael’s hands were trembling with anticipation as he reached out to take the photograph from the man.  He flipped it over, and his whole world suddenly stopped.  All the blood in his body seemed to rush into his head, pounding and pounding at his ears and drowning out the traffic noise until all he could hear was the sound of his own terror.  The photograph was of him… and Trevor.  Him and Trevor.  Together.  Trevor leaning back against the leather sofa in his lounge at home, one hand on the back of Michael’s head, fingers gripping tightly to his hair and a look of pure bliss on his face.  And Michael…. He felt sick to his stomach as he gazed at his own face contorting in an intense expression of obscene desire, hungrily gazing at Trevor’s cock that was inches from his parted lips.

“W-what… what the fuck?”

“Hey man, that’s not a very nice thing to say to one of your fans.”  The man shook his head in mock disbelief.  “You’re supposed to be all ‘ _ooh, nice to meet you, thanks for your support_ ,’ that sort of thing. You didn’t even ask my name!  It’s Beverly by the way, not that you care or anything.”  He tutted and rolled his eyes dramatically.  “And I don’t know why this photo’s making you so confused, bro, you gotta remember that night,” he said, nodding towards the photograph, “it was only two days ago!  Your crackhead trailer-trash boyfriend will be hurt if he finds out you don’t remember your night of passion together!”  He gave a jittery little laugh and shifted his weight from foot to foot, his eyes never leaving Michael’s face.

Michael continued to stare in horror at the photograph.  Every explicit detail seemed to burn into his mind to the point where even if he closed his eyes he would probably still see it.  For the last two days all of his memories of that night had seemed like a fantasy come to life: so perfect and exhilarating that he could scarcely believe it had happened to him.  This photograph had destroyed that completely.  Now he only felt ill to think about what they’d done.  What had once been a beautiful, intimate experience shared only by him and Trevor was now made real for anyone to see, and to scrutinise and to judge.  The evidence was right there, crumpled between his fingers.  Evidence of his own stupid mistake.  His chest felt tight and a groan rumbled in his throat.  He was such an idiot!  How could he have possibly thought that there would be no consequences from that night?  Of course someone would end up finding out!  Of course the universe would find some way to make sure he suffered for every good thing that ever happened to him!  He took a deep rasping breath and let it out in a sigh.

“What do you want?”  It wasn’t even a question.  He knew where this was going.

“What do I want?”  Beverly gave that irritating little laugh again.  “Bro, I don’t think you understand the significance of this moment.  See, every night for the past year before I’d go to sleep I would say a prayer, just a little prayer, to the God of the Paparazzi.  I’d be like ‘uhh, hey God of the Paparazzi.  I’ve been a good little photographer this past year.  I’ve served my time hiding in dumpsters and digging through Z-listers’ trashcans.  Can I please-pretty-please get a money shot sometime soon?  You know, something really juicy!  Something like… oh, I don’t know… a shot of a middle-aged washed-up football star sucking off a homeless guy?’  And would you believe it, my prayers have been answered, amen and hallelujah!”

He flicked the underside of the photograph with a loud bang, causing the horrifying image to jump up towards Michael’s face.

“This, my friend?  _This_ is a money shot – as in a _shot_ that people will pay lots of _money_ to publish, in case you didn’t get that - and believe me, everyone is gonna want to publish this baby!  I mean, just look at it!  It’s got it all!  Faded celebrity, cheating on his wife…” He counted off on his fingers.  “Illicit affair in his own home, not to mention the drugs of course – it’s not in the photo but I saw it man, tut-tut!  And best of all, it’s super gay!  It’s a scandal on top of a scandal, wrapped in all sorts of fucked up shit.  Every magazine in the country is gonna want this!  Ohh, I _knew_ it was worth staking out the Rockford Hills mansions, I just knew I’d get a payoff like this eventually!  I can see the headlines now...”  He draped a hand across Michael’s frozen shoulders and gestured grandly towards the sky.  “Former football hero plays for the other side!  Or, or… wait, I can do better than that… how about ‘he sucked at football, now see what else he sucks at!”

“Just get to the fucking point,” Michael spat through clenched teeth, his voice a low menacing growl.

“Woah, chill man!”  Beverly retrieved his arm from across Michael’s shoulders and scurried a few steps away.  “I was just gonna say that there’s sure to be a bidding war between the various publishers for this bad boy, so I thought I’d do the decent thing and offer you the first opportunity to own this little piece of history before I open it to the floor.  Whaddaya say, bro?”

“You’re blackmailing me?”  Once again, it wasn’t a question.

Beverly shrugged nonchalantly.

“You call it what you wanna call it, man, but I’m calling it good business sense.”  There wasn’t even a shred of guilt in his voice.  “Now I’m guessing I could get around forty, fifty thousand for this from my contacts, maybe even eighty if it’s a slow news day, but hey, I’m a decent guy and I assume you don’t exactly want this photo landing on every editor’s desk from here to Liberty City, so…”  He paused for a few seconds, as if savouring the moment, before he flashed a sickening smile at Michael’s glowering face.  “How ‘bout we say that $100K buys you exclusive rights to this photograph, as well as my silence.”

Michael stared blankly for a moment, barely taking in the words, and he dropped his eyes away from Beverly’s smug expression down to the glossy photograph in his hand.  He wasn’t sure which sight was worse.  His eyes drooped closed and he raised a hand to his temple as if to ward off a headache and felt the vein there pulse erratically.  What was he supposed to do?  This couldn’t be happening to him, not now, not when he’d just started to get his life back on track and he was actually happy for the first time in years.  Why was this happening to him now?

“I… I don’t know…” he muttered weakly, the words leaking out before he could hold them back.

Beverly tilted his head to one side.

“Huh?  You don’t know what?”

Michael dropped his hand to his side and shook his head in an attempt to clear it.  He let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t know why shit like this keeps happening to me,” he muttered quietly.  He swallowed and spoke again, his voice a little louder.  “I don’t know what I did in a past life to deserve this much bad luck.  I don’t know what I’ll need to do to be able to pay for this.  I don’t know how I could ever face my wife and kids again if this got out.  I don’t know what to say to Tre- to my crackhead trailer-trash boyfriend.”  Michael paused open-mouthed as he realised that ‘crackhead’ was now the least accurate part of that description of Trevor.  “I… I just don’t know, alright!”  He was shouting now, and attracting stares from people passing by.  “How am I supposed to think straight right now?  I need to… I have to… argh, give me time, alright?  Give me a couple days to get my head straight and I’ll see what I can do to get the money.  Just… don’t do anything rash, ok?”

Beverly’s mouth stretched into a wide grin.

“What’s the magic word?”

The little shit was going to make him beg.  Michael lowered his head, and squashed his pride down as low as it would go.

“…p-please don’t publish that photograph.   I’ll get the money.  Just give me time.  Please.”  He felt as if all his insides had been scraped out.

Beverly pursed his lips and theatrically ran his finger and thumb along the scraggly hair on his chin.

“Hmm, I dunno, I am pretty eager to get this piece out to the public… but I guess I can wait a week.  No, on second thoughts…” He held up one finger as he pondered.  “I’ll give you three days.  That’s three days to get your shit together, track down that tweaker boyfriend of yours to whatever dumpster you found him in, work out how you’re gonna scrape together $100K and then get back to me.  Ok?  Here’s my card.”

A white business card appeared in front of Michael’s nose.  He dejectedly reached up to take it.

“Oh wait, I’d better give you the envelope for that too.”  Beverly jerked his head towards the photograph and handed Michael a crumpled manila envelope.  “There’s children around here, we wouldn’t want them seeing filth like that, now would we?”  He smirked, and then turned to leave as Michael shakily slid the card and the photograph into the envelope.

“Hey, kid.”

Beverly turned back to Michael with a puzzled look.

“Yeah?”

A furious glare burned on his face, and Michael put as much venom as he could into his next words.

_“Fuck you.”_

Beverly’s eyebrows went up into his greasy hairline.  He snorted a laugh and shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah whatever, bro.  Looking forward to your call!”

* * *

 

An elbow in the ribs jolted Michael out of his stupor.

“You gonna tell me what’s wrong with you?” growled a familiar voice at Michael’s side.

“Huh?”

“You spent that whole meeting looking like you just walked in on someone fucking your grandma.  Come on, Mikey, tell Uncle Trevor what’s wrong.”

Despite everything that had happened that morning and the swirling confusion in his head and gut, the corner of Michael’s mouth turned up and he snorted a laugh.

“If you promise to never refer to yourself as ‘Uncle Trevor’ ever again, then fine.  I’ll tell you.”  He took a deep breath, his smile suddenly nowhere to be seen.  “Something happened on the way over here and… I don’t know how to deal with it.”

Trevor narrowed the gap between them and his dark eyes locked on Michael’s, his face suddenly inches away and deathly serious.

“What?  What is it?  Tell me.”

Michael opened his mouth to speak, before he stopped himself and cast a concerned glance up and down the still-bustling hallway - their sobriety meeting having only just ended – where he caught sight of what appeared to be an empty room a couple doors down from their own meeting room.  He gestured to Trevor with a jerk of his head towards the open door.  As they stepped into the vacant room Michael pulled the door closed behind them with an audible _click_ , before he reluctantly reached into the messenger bag at his side to pull out the manila envelope.  He held it stiffly in both hands for a moment, his head lowered and his mind buzzing as to how he would even begin to describe his encounter with Beverly, before he slowly slid the photograph out and wordlessly offered it to Trevor.  With hands that he couldn’t seem to hold steady, he stuffed the empty envelope back into his bag and swapped it for a battered packet of cigarettes.  After a few frustrated attempts to coax a flame out of the lighter – was _anything_ going to go his way today – he eventually managed to light the end of the cigarette and took a long, savouring draw.  The smoke gusted out of his parted lips and his nerves began to feel a little steadier, but he was still a long way away from calm.  It was as if a siren was screaming incessantly in his head, shrill and deafening, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t silence it. 

As he hungrily brought the cigarette back to his lips he stole a quick glance at Trevor.   He knew from experience that it was impossible to predict Trevor’s reaction to anything and, this being no exception, he tried to resist the urge to back away from him in case his response turned out to be on the more explosive end of the scale.  When Trevor suddenly burst out laughing Michael’s head abruptly snapped up, his eyes wide in surprise.

“Jesus, Mikey, look at your face in this!”  He tapped one filthy nail against the photograph’s glossy surface.  “Look at the way you’re staring at my cock!  It’s like a man dying of thirst in the middle of the desert.  It’s _obscene_ , I love it!  Ohh, I’ll need to get this framed.   I can name it ‘the God of Fucking in all his glory’ and hang it above my bed.”

Michael stared in astonishment, his cigarette temporarily forgotten at his side and dropping flakes of ash onto the wooden floor.  He opened his mouth to respond but, as his mind had gone completely blank, closed it again with a snap.  He settled instead on scowling at Trevor, a blush spreading to his ears.  So Trevor _had_ remembered his little poetic moment from that night.

“Yeah, well,” he eventually managed to splutter, “you don’t exactly look dignified either with your… your porn-star face and your cock hanging out!”

Trevor only laughed.

“Are you kidding me?  I look fucking glorious!  Ohh, Mikey, I think I might have caught a glimpse of my true calling in life.  Yeah, I seriously think that Trevor Philips Enterprises could be branching out in the future!”

Michael was dumbstruck at the bizarre direction their serious conversation had taken.  He shook his head incredulously and tried to stop his fists from clenching in frustration.

“Aren’t you even gonna ask where this picture came from?” he growled.  “Is my embarrassing sex face really more important than the fact we’re being blackmailed?”

Trevor’s head snapped up.

“Woah, what?  _Blackmailed?_   By who?”  Fury suddenly burned in Trevor’s eyes.  “Who the fuck was dumb enough to try to blackmail you?  Where are they?  I’LL FUCKING KILL THEM!”

Michael cast a quick glance towards the closed door, concerned that someone might have overheard that outburst.  He was sure he could physically feel the intensity of Trevor’s anger, hot against his skin like a furnace.  The sensation wasn’t making him feel any better and was actually making him feel ill: hot and cold, shaky and shivering, his head buzzing with a thousand ideas a minute, and yet somehow blank and unresponsive at the same time.  He shook his head violently to try to clear the fuzz from his mind.

“He’s gone, T, I’ve no idea where he is,” he muttered.  “He’s just some slimeball paparazzi guy.  He came up to me on the street, handed me this photo and his card and said he wants one hundred thousand dollars within the next three days, or he’s gonna go and sell that photo to every trashy magazine in the country.”  He still couldn’t look Trevor directly in the eye and gazed over at the wall beside him instead.  Judging from the posters of kindly saints and biblical figures it looked like the room might be used for Sunday School lessons.  Michael began to feel a little guilty at dropping ash all over the floor and, lowering his eyes, he began to half-heartedly kick away some of his debris.

“T… I really don’t know what to do about this,” he confessed.  “All I know is we have to make this go away, ‘cause no matter what I can’t let that picture get published.  You know I’ve got a wife and kids to think about; if they saw that photo they’d never speak to me again.  And that’s just the start of it: there’s my parents and my neighbours to think of too, my friends, all of my old teammates, all the fuckwits in the media and on the internet…  I can’t let this get out there, I just can’t deal with that right now!” 

There was a tremor to his voice as he finally met Trevor’s gaze with wide, pleading eyes.  He caught a glimpse a strange look on the other man’s face, a fleeting expression that Michael didn’t fully recognise.  It may have been simple concern for his friend, but it could have been something more than that.  Could it be that Trevor was hurt by how horrified he was at the idea of their relationship becoming public knowledge?  Guilt trickled through Michael’s stomach at the idea, but whatever the expression had meant it was long gone now, and replaced by something completely impassive. 

“There’s gotta be another heist we can do, right?” continued Michael.  “There’s gotta be somewhere that’ll have a score that big that we can find in the next couple days.  Come on, T, you’ve got connections, you must know something!”

Trevor closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Mikey, there’s isn’t a score on earth that’d get us enough money in time.”  His tone was calm and matter-of-fact, and probably the gentlest that Michael had ever heard from him.  “Think about it: there’s not enough time to fence anything so we’d have to hit a place that held cash.  Lots of cash.  That basically narrows things down to a bank heist – or robbing Scrooge McDuck, I guess – and I shouldn’t need to tell you we can’t rob either of those in three days.  That shit takes weeks at least to plan, and if we’re gonna do a bank heist then we’re gonna do it right.”  He folded his arms across his chest and nodded emphatically. 

Michael swallowed audibly, and desperately scanned his friend’s face for any indication that he might have another idea, or any way out at all that would free him from this nightmare.  When it became apparent that Trevor really didn’t have any solutions, Michael abruptly groaned aloud and ran both hands over his hair, scrubbing at his scalp.

“Okay, yeah, I… I guess that makes a lot of sense,” he stammered with an unconvincing smile on his lips, “but… there’s gotta be another way to get the cash, right?  W-what about small time stuff?  Sure, we’d need to hit a lot of places, and I’d maybe need to sell some of my shit to make up the difference, but a few thousand here and a few thousand there would all add up.  We could make it work!”

There was a note of irritation in Trevor’s voice as he replied.

“Did you hear a fucking word I just said?  _We’d never make enough money in time._   We could hit every liquor store and ATM in the state and still not be halfway there.  And anyway,” he spat, his tone darkening even further, “Do you wanna know what would happen if you did manage to find some miraculous way to pay that asshole off?  I’ll tell you exactly what would happen: he’d take your money and then sell the picture to the magazines anyway.  There’s no reason for him not to do it and it’s exactly what I would do if it was me blackmailing someone - and believe me, I speak from experience.”

With each of Trevor’s words, thin tendrils of panic began to wrap their way around Michael’s mind, constricting and smothering him until he felt he could hardly breathe.  His worst fears were being shoved in his face and used as a weapon against him, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.  He was powerless, and Trevor’s attitude wasn’t helping matters at all.  His voice was reduced to a weak croak and he could barely get the words out of his mouth.

“But… but if we can’t pay him off then what else can we do to stop him publishing it?  What other option do we have?  Unless...”  Hope bloomed wildly inside him.  “Could we steal the photo from him somehow?  Or maybe destroy it?”  His mouth twisted into a wide grin that did nothing to mask the terror in his eyes.  “Yeah… that could work!  We could find out where he lives, break into his apartment and steal any physical copies he’s got stashed there, and then… then we’d trash his camera and his computer.  That’d destroy everything; that should work, right?  He can’t blackmail us without the photo, right?”

Trevor scrunched up his nose as if he’d smelt something bad and pulled his chapped lips into a thin line.

“Michael, it’d take me three days just to explain all the reasons why that wouldn’t work.  Oh, don’t give me that look, think about it!  If you were blackmailing someone with a photograph and had $100K riding on it, how many copies of that photograph would you make?  That dickwad will be insulating his home with spare copies for years - his grandkids will be finding them decades from now and wondering what kind of kinky shit their grandpa was into.  And that’s just talking about physical copies of course, he’ll probably have a hundred digital copies on every electronic device he owns and another few thousand online just in case.  Face it: you’d never get rid of them all.”

Michael’s nails scraped along his scalp until they were on the verge of drawing blood.  His breathing was laboured and his heart was pounding so forcefully he worried that he might pass out.  Panicked eyes flicked from Trevor to the floor, across to the door and then darted over to the posters on the walls.  ‘ _What would Jesus do?’_ asked one well-meaning poster.  Michael groaned so loudly it was almost a roar.

“There’s no other way!” he yelled.  “We have to kill him!  I’ve killed someone before – and fuck knows how many people you’ve killed – we’ll show him he’s fucked with the wrong people.  I didn’t feel any guilt at all when I shot that woman two weeks ago and she didn’t even deserve to die - I know I definitely wouldn’t feel any remorse if it was someone who did deserve it.”  His mouth twisted into a manic smile.  “Yeah, yeah, we can call him and arrange a meeting – make it somewhere out of the way, out of the city maybe – and then… just shoot him!  We can bury him there and then that’s that, problem solved.  One less shit bag in the world.  We’d be doing everyone a favour.”

Trevor pondered for a moment, scratching at the side of his neck as he did so, but he eventually shook his head.

“Hmm, I dunno, M.  As much as I enjoy a good murder, I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

Well, that wasn’t the response he’d been expecting.

“What?  W-why not?  I thought for sure you’d be behind me on this!  For fuck’s sake, your first reaction to finding out we were being blackmailed was ‘ _I’ll fucking kill him_!’  What’s with the change of heart now?  What makes his life so important?  He’s blackmailing you as much as he’s blackmailing me!  Why are-”

“He’s _not_ blackmailing me,” interrupted Trevor. “He’s really not.  The thing is, one way or another half of this city has seen my cock already and I really couldn’t care less if the other half see it as well.  Putting it simply, I don’t care if that picture gets published.  The only one being blackmailed here is you.”

Swaying slightly, Michael involuntarily took a step back.  The hurt on his face was plain to see.  

“Wh-what the fuck… I thought you had my back, Trevor.  I thought we were friends.” 

With an exasperated groan, Trevor rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in defeat.

“Ok, I guess I didn’t word that very well.  I only meant I don’t care _for my own sake_ if that picture gets published, but I _do_ care if someone is threatening you, alright?  I’ve always got your back.  I’m just saying that killing someone isn’t always the best option.”  He raised his eyebrows in amazement.  “And _there’s_ a phrase I never thought I’d hear myself saying.”

Trevor’s words did nothing to calm Michael, and instead caused his simmering rage to boil over.  He’d never guessed that Trevor could be such a hypocrite.

“WHY?” he screamed, “WHY is it not the best option?  Tell me!”

“It’s because he’s paparazzi, ok?” explained Trevor with a placating wave of his hand.  “You know those scumbags live for stories.  This picture of us is a pretty juicy story to him, sure, but your _reaction_ to the picture only adds to that story.  It’ll make it even juicier.”

Michael stared.  His pupils were dilated and his hands shook with unspent anger.

_“Huh?”_

Taking no notice of Michael’s murderous expression, Trevor carried on with his explanation.

“If you arrange a secluded meeting with this guy then there’s no way in hell he’s showing up alone.  He’ll have some lackey of his lurking in the bushes with a camera, waiting for a shot of you getting pissed off, or handing over money, or getting down on your knees and begging - whatever happens it’s all part of his story, and if that story ends in murder then you’re going to fucking jail.  _That’s_ why murder’s not the best option.”

“Then what _is_ the best option?  What the fuck am I supposed to do!?”

A mischievous smile crept across Trevor’s face.

“Let it get published.”

Michael stared open-mouthed for what must have been at least ten seconds.  A low croaking noise sounded in his throat.

“Seriously,” continued Trevor in a cheerful, confident voice.  “Let the picture get published.  Tell the guy who’s blackmailing you to go fuck himself.  What’s the worst that can happen?”

The croak soon turned into a roar.

“Th-the worst that can happen?  Are you fucking kidding me?  The whole world will know that we fucked each other!  Or-or at least that I sucked you off!”

“And what’s wrong with that?  It’s not a crime, is it?  He can’t prove we were taking Speed before the photo was taken, and he clearly doesn’t know anything about the heists or he would’ve blackmailed you with that and not with this.”  He held the picture up to Michael’s face and spoke slowly and clearly, like a teacher explaining to a particularly slow pupil.  “There is nothing wrong with what’s happening in this picture, Michael.  It’s just oral sex.  This isn’t the 1950s; people give it all the time.”

“Well, _I_ don’t,” Michael muttered with a frown.

Trevor grinned and waved the picture in front of Michael’s nose.

“I have photographic evidence to prove otherwise,” he teased.

The scowl on Michael’s face darkened.

“You know what I mean, T,” he sighed, his anger suddenly spent.  “I can’t let people know that it happened.  I’m not _ready_ to let people know that it happened.  I just can’t… they’d crucify me.  I- I knew for years that the guys on the team were saying stuff behind my back about me: ‘ _don’t drop the soap when Michael’s in the showers_ ’, nasty shit like that.  If they knew about this then-”

“Then what?  They’d continue to have no respect for you?”

Michael grunted in exasperation.

“Well, maybe you can put it that way, but it’s not like it’s just them, is it?  It’s my wife and kids too, I’ve gotta think about them.  If they found out they’d-”

“They’d never speak to you again, yeah, you said already.”  Trevor’s voice became more abrasive.  “Correct me if I’m wrong here ‘cause I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same people.  When you say you’ve ‘ _gotta think about your wife and kids_ ’, you’re referring to the lovely wife who cheated on you for years before you caught her fucking some guy in a sportscar, right?  And those two kids who _already_ never speak to you and are barely aware of your existence, those are the kids you’re worried won’t speak to you, right?  See, I listen to the things you tell me!  Oh, and while we’re at it, I distinctly remember you going in to great detail in a certain bar after a few drinks about just how much you hated your old teammates.  You knew right from the start that they had no respect for you, and they never liked you or thought you were good enough to be on the team.  So why the fuck would you start caring about their opinions now!”

With a single stride Michael closed the gap between them and shoved Trevor hard on the shoulder.  His face was pure rage, twisting and shifting like hot magma.

“Don’t you fucking dare try to act like you understand me!  You know nothing about me!”  He shoved him a second time and pointed two fingers at Trevor’s face like he was threatening him with a weapon.  “What gives you the right to judge me?  You just breeze through life without a care in the world; the only things that matter to you are where your next hit’s coming from or what the next big score’s gonna be.  You don’t give a fuck about anything and no-one gives a fuck about you.  You don’t know what it’s like to-”

“I care about you!”

Michael stopped, his mouth still open and his hand still raised.

 _“_ Wh _-what?”_

Brushing Michael’s hand aside, Trevor leaned in a little closer.

“I care what happens to you, ok?  Is that really so hard to believe?”  He flashed a lopsided smirk before his face turned serious.  “I see you taking so much shit from other people all the time and all you do is just accept it.  You’re like ‘ _oh, I’ll sit around and wait for my cheating wife to call me_ ’ or ‘ _guess I’d better pay off this piece of shit blackmailer_!’”  He sighed in disgust and Michael felt the gust of his breath warm on his face.  “You spend so much time shitting bricks about what other people think of you and it’s not doing you one fucking bit of good.  What’s happened has happened: your career’s over, your marriage is on life support, and we fucked two nights ago and it was amazing.  You don’t owe anything to anyone anymore, so why don’t you just yell ‘ _fuck’em_ ’ and do whatever the fuck you wanna do?  Do what makes you happy, not what you think’ll make other people respect you.”  He grinned suddenly.  “That’s what I do!  That’s the reason why that prick can’t blackmail me, ‘cause I don’t give a fuck about what people think of me!”  With fire in his eyes, he gripped a hand to Michael’s shoulder.  “You know what you need to do right now?  You need to call up Beverly, or whatever his stupid name is, tell him to shove a whole stack of those pictures up his ass and let the magazines do their worst.  I’m not gonna pretend it’ll be a picnic – you’ll get a lot of shit from a lot of people when that picture gets out there – but after that, _it’ll be out there_.   It’ll just be a thing that happened and no-one will give a fuck anymore.  It’ll be over.”

Michael stood perfectly still and stared intently at Trevor’s face that was so close to his own.  It was very, very tempting to do exactly as he suggested.  The panic and fear and anger that had coursing through him the entire afternoon finally felt like they were starting to subside.   _It’ll be over_.   More than anything, that was what he wanted right now.  He wanted it to be over, and he wanted to be happy.  Perhaps the weirdo standing in front of him could help him out with both of those goals. 

“You know what?”  A smile lit up his face.  “You’re right.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry, what was that?” asked Trevor with a tilt to his head and a smirk on his lips.

“I said you’re fucking right!”  A relieved laugh gusted out him and he shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t being gripped by Trevor’s hand, shaking his head slightly in disbelief.  “Fuck’em.  I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore.”  His smile was getting bigger and bigger, and on a sudden impulse he grabbed the hand on his shoulder, leaned over and kissed Trevor hard on the lips, before reaching up to grip the back of his neck.  They held the kiss for a few wonderful moments, and as their lips parted he rested his forehead on Trevor’s and smiled softly to himself.  “Fuck’em,” he whispered.  Trevor’s hot breath gusted across his face as he laughed.

“I think I like this new Michael,” he said with a grin.

* * *

 

“Here it is!” called Trevor from the other end of the living room.  “Hopefully the one and only time in my life I’ll ever have to buy a copy of _Violation_.”  He tossed the glossy magazine across to Michael and it landed in his lap in a mess of crumpled pages.  “There’s a vague mention on the cover but I haven’t looked inside yet.  Thought I’d let you have the honour.”

As Michael picked the magazine up off his lap and attempted to straighten out the pages he became aware of the couch shifting underneath him as Trevor flopped down beside him and scooched in close.  He felt the warmth of his side as it pressed snugly against his own, and then an arm was draped across his shoulder.  “It’s some trashy celebrity wedding all over the cover” came Trevor’s voice next to his ear, “but there’s our little mention over there.”

Trevor’s finger rested on a garish yellow-and-purple bullet point – the fourth bullet point down on the cover – that screamed out ‘ _Ex-football hero caught out in gay affair scandal!  Page 14!_ ’  Michael’s guts churned to see the words, and the darkest, most creative parts of his brain conjured up the reactions of the magazine’s readers: outraged faces twisted in disgust, or bursting out in smug laughter.  However, when he noticed that ‘ _Secret diets of celebrity cats! Page 12!_ ’ was immediately above his story, he lost any respect he might have had for the readers of _Violation_ magazine, and reminded himself again of his new motto.  Fuck’em.  His face twitched in a scowl.

“You ready to turn to page 14?” asked Trevor with a note of concern.

Michael slowly inhaled, closed his eyes, and breathed out deeply.  He nodded once.

“Yeah.  Let’s see the damage.”

He leafed through the magazine one scandalised page at a time.  He turned past ‘ _Baby-bump or fat-bump?  You decide!_ ’ and then ‘ _Back to ex-husband number three!  When will she learn_?’  His heart beat faster and faster with each page that he turned and held his breath as he approached Page 14 – and there it was.  The photo was spread across half of one page, and was garnished with the headline ‘ _Whatever will his wife say?  Faded football star gets adventurous with homeless man!_ ’ 

“Huh, at least that’s better than Beverly’s attempts at headlines”, muttered Michael.  “‘ _Adventurous_ ’ is a nice touch.”

“Yeah well, I take great offense at ‘ _homeless_ ’; my trailer is a perfectly serviceable home.  And they pixelated out my cock!  How dare they! It’s a fucking work of art!”

Michael smiled at Trevor’s grumblings.

“What a shame, I guess the other half of Los Santos is spared for the time being.  I wish they’d pixelated out my face, it’s gotta be the most offensive thing in the whole picture.”

With a jolt, Michael felt fingers ghosting along his thigh and up to his hand holding the magazine. 

“That face is magnificent, Mikey, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  Porn-stars could learn from your technique.”  Trevor grinned.  “And I wasn’t kidding about getting it framed, by the way.  I want you to see it every time you come over.”

Michael rolled his eyes at the comment, but inside his stomach twisted to hear Trevor casually making future plans involving him, regardless of whether or not those plans were centred around making fun of him.

Trevor’s hand had resumed its journey up and down Michael’s thigh.

“So… I’m guessing you won’t be going outside much for the next few weeks while this whole thing dies down.”  The hand stopped, and he cast a pointed look at Michael.  “ _However_ will we pass the time?”

Michael tossed the magazine aside, and it clattered to the floor in a pile of bent pages.

“Hmm… I don’t know,” he teased.  “How about the same thing that got us into this mess in the first place?”

A wide grin spread across Trevor’s face.

“I think you read my mind.”

In one fluid motion he sprung off the couch and draped one knee over Michael’s lap, before wrapping both arms across his back.

“Hey, wait a second”, Michael interjected.

Staying perfectly still in his position across Michael’s lap, Trevor raised one puzzled eyebrow.  Michael laughed.

“Just… let me close the curtains first.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! This is my first ever fanfiction so thank you for seeing it through to the end. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you enjoyed it. Special and amazing thank-yous to everyone who commented and left kudos: every one of you made me smile and some of the comments caused me to make little high pitched squeaking noises of joy.
> 
> I'd actually originally planned for this story to have a much darker ending. I'd wanted a happy ending right from the start, but I just couldn't think of a way for everything to resolve itself into a happy ending. I'd written a vague draft of the darker ending and it would have basically mirrored what happens in the canon timeline, in that Michael would eventually decide that Trevor is too dangerous to be around (due to something like Trevor killing Beverly, or beating him to a pulp or burning his house down, I hadn't fully decided) and Michael deciding to leave him. Trevor would react badly to being effectively dumped, and would (idly) threaten to kill Michael and his family. Michael would then think of a way to get away from Trevor, and decides on betraying him and turning him over to the cops. He'd then go back to his wife, and it would end with Trevor calling Michael from prison and telling him he forgives him for turning him in. Yeah, cheery stuff. I couldn't bring myself to finish it though, and I eventually ended up with this ending instead which I'm much happier with :)


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